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

[Matt Schricker]

Thanks for the reminder Mike. Maybe I’ll pick a day this week and try to
shoot some Ha!

Matt

On Mon, Jan 9, 2023 at 3:11 PM Mike McCabe <cartech2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 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.
>
> [image: Inline image]
> *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.*
>
>
> *[image: Inline image]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
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ssastros.org/pipermail/friends_of_ssastros_ssastros.org/attachments/20230109/b6d0724c/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 1673293911316blob.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 1015501 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://ssastros.org/pipermail/friends_of_ssastros_ssastros.org/attachments/20230109/b6d0724c/attachment.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 1673294237471blob.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 2228916 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://ssastros.org/pipermail/friends_of_ssastros_ssastros.org/attachments/20230109/b6d0724c/attachment-0001.jpg>