[Friends_of_SSASTROS] The Sun, it's Firing on all Cylinders Now!

[Mike McCabe]

Howdy, Winter Warriors!
I might have mentioned recently (if you read the observing objectives for the month ;-) that observing the Sun in the winter is beneficial in the sense that you're either sitting or standing directly in it while doing so, so it's warming you at least a little at the same time. Winter nights are cold, and the days can be too, but being in the Sun does help at least somewhat with that aspect of observing.
And now is a good time to point your gear at our very own giant glowing ball of 99+% hydrogen. There are active regions galore, it's flaring like crazy, and they just keep coming in rapid fire fashion.

In broadband white light this week you'll find a row of large active regions spanning clear across the southern hemisphere, with new ones seemingly rounding the limb every day. Here comes a little teaching moment; when looking at the Sun, north is at top and south at the bottom -  normal - but on the not so normal side of things the left limb is called east and right limb is called west. As far as I know it's the only body in our solar system that uses that orientation, and try as I may I've never been able to come up with a definitive explanation for why that is.

In Ha light (which this isn't but it's close enough) you'll find a cacophony of dynamic features in the chromosphere. This image, grabbed from NASA's SDO website, shows a thing called PFSS, short for "Potential Field-Source Surface Model", which shows the probable structure of the coronal magnetic fields. The most interesting sight in the eyepiece today was on the upper left limb (northeast) where an active region was spewing bright material in a straight line into space.
If you're not observing the Sun you're missing out on a huge percentage of daily observing opportunities, and when you do take advantage of them you eventually come to realize that the Sun is the most dynamic object by far that an amateur astronomer has access to.
Should we host a solar filter making workshop? White light filters are relatively easy and inexpensive to build. You might even already own the ideal scope for it, and there are a number of different ways to go about it. Let's get a discussion going and explore it. If there's enough interest we might even be able to score a deal on materials bought in bulk.
Keep Looking Up!
Mike McCabe
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