Hoot

Handsome sunspot region 1734… looking a little owlish in this orientation.

Sunspot movie

Thirty minutes in the life of a huge sunspot. The short lived granules of the solar photosphere come and go in constant movement beneath the massive active region.

Jason Major has a great story on this at Universe Today. 

Oh by the way, did you catch the lion?

Here’s a little closer look into the heart of this solar magnetic maelstrom. 

Archipelago

Active Region 1520 currently rotating towards the center of the sun is HUGE… I can only fit a small crop of its full portrait here. The archipelago spans more than 200,000 miles of the solar surface. 

A Fine Mess

Since its first appearance a week ago, Active Region 1476 sure has been making a beautiful mess of the solar surface.

Have you taken your sun today?

X-Rated

Solar active region 1429 has been popping of X-class flares like nobody’s business. Now decaying and rotating out of view, it still had a lot of punch yesterday when this picture (and 45 gigabytes of data) was recorded from my backyard. Tonality reversed and colored in the pink hues of hydrogen alpha. More to follow. 

Maelstrom of AR1339

Active Region 1339 is a stunner. Here is a view at the wavelength of hydrogen alpha light showing the big beautiful sunspot group and the maelstrom of chromosphere that surrounds it.

Big Blemish/ active region 1339

The sun is just above the rooftops behind my backyard, but I couldn’t resist wrestling with this beautiful complex group of sunspots. 

Big, Bad and Beautiful.

I was back out staring at the sun this morning… safely, of course, with a sun filter securely attached to the front of my 10” telescope. Active Region 1302 is something special. It’s BIG… the field of view of this photo is about 110,000 miles - almost 14 earths would fit across it. Traveling from end to end is a schlep almost half the distance from the earth to the moon. It’s BAD, popping off X class flares and harboring the potential for more. But mostly, to my eye, it’s a BEAUTY, from the complex convolutions of the largest sunspot penumbra to the little heart shaped umbra at the bottom - all set in a sea of photospheric granules. Thanks for being there and sitting still for this portrait, lovely 1302.

And thanks to Bad Astronomer Phil Plait for his great blog story at Discover and to Jason Major for sharing the word on DiscoveryNews.