The Sun 9-5-09 – A Class Flare seen in CaK

Had to image in two separate sessions today due to intervening cloud and rain. Caught the Ha and CaK disks this morning at 11.30BST then imaged the active regions in more detail between 17.10 and 18.10 BST. The new AR is further round in the NE quarter now and the second can just be seen right on the limb. The first AR (nominally 11017 if it forms a sunspot) consists of two primary S- shaped strands of plage. While watching the active regions at 17.15 BST (16.15 UT) I noticed an area brightening rapidly in the plage. I dashed inside to confirm it was a flare on the GOES X-Ray flux monitor and it was peaking at A-Class, this was a first for me watching a flare brighten live! This second AR has been a hot bed of activity over the last 24 hours with many small eruptive prominences. The A-Class flare was subsequently confirmed by Thomas Ashcraft in Mexico who caught it as a radio burst at 16.14 UT.

Solar Radio Burst Image courtesy of Thomas Ashcraft, Mexico

The Sun 8-5-09 – New Active Region – 11017 ?

A new active region has rounded the NE limb and its an SC24 cycle region! Actually there will be two on the earth side of the sun soon as we have been following their progress from the far side via the Stereo Behind satellite. The second one looks like it will be brighter and more active. Two linear stripes of plage make up the new AR but no sunspot has been seen so far.

Th Sun 6-5-09 – Disk and Proms

Just managed to catch these late and low on the horizon at 17.50 UT. Nice set of small wispy proms in the west with some detailed structure plus another set of low arches in the east – west is at bottom of images.

The Sun 3-5-09

Grabbed some late images after the cloud cleared tonight. Not much to see except the main prom and a couple of faint small filaments.

The Sun 2-5-09 – Impressive Loop Prom!

Had some better than average seeing this morning at 8.30 UT and I couldn’t believe the great view via the PST with very sharp and large proms in each quarter of the disk. There was a perfect double loop in the north west, the best of its type that I have seen so far. I took a series of disk and prom shots between 8.34 – 9.15 UT.

Later on I made a short 25 frame animation of the main loop between 10.34 and 11.10 running at 1/15th sec. This was a slow burning prom with very little change in shape except at the apex of the arch where the plasma curls over. It looks like the prom changed shape and got more active after I was imaging judging by later images and animations posted on the Cloud Nights Solar Forum. Lots of cloud after 10.45 caused some brightness changes in the animation as a few of the frames were shot through a thin cloud layer.