Thursday 13 October 2011

An active Sun

More H-alpha images of the Sun on 11th October 2011, taken from ESAC with the Solarmax Coronado scope.


An enormous prominence is seen on the top of the Sun limb. The inset shows a magnified image, using a 2x Barlow, with an Earth to scale for comparison. We imaged this feature for ~3h, but the sequence shows little variation of its visible shape. This is a quite stable prominence, at least compared to the highly dynamic prominence after the X1.4-class flare on Sep 22nd .

There are several sunspots visible, and some dark filaments. Other interesting prominences are seen, like a broccoli-shape one on the right of the image.

This big prominence on October 11th seems to have grown from the one observed on October 09th. It was not present anymore on 14th October, as displayed in this animation.


The Sun is keeping a high activity these last weeks.