Wow, Sun
Thursday at the Audubon Center, while waiting for what turned out to be a really great talk on doves to start, I had my solar telescope with me (didn't want to leave it in the car) and saw the biggest prominence I've yet seen:
But today after getting home from the zoo, I saw a huge magnetic storm. I think it's grown from the same plage that was just inside the disc from the big prominence on Thursday, only it grew a lot. Though I haven't had a chance to check yet. It's been putting out solar flares today, and has a chance to put out X-class flares. It's also aimed at the Earth. So friends to the North may get some amazing auroras, and everyone might get lousy radio/cell/WiFi reception for the next few days. We'll see. But it's lovely to see in its own environs:
You can also see some more huge prominences on the edge of the disc, including one that wraps around the Sun's horizon and is visible against the face. Usually against the face they look black because the motion is mostly sideways to us, but this one must be flowing really fast to have Doppler shifted back into the filter's bandpass region. That's another thing I've seen for the first time.
But today after getting home from the zoo, I saw a huge magnetic storm. I think it's grown from the same plage that was just inside the disc from the big prominence on Thursday, only it grew a lot. Though I haven't had a chance to check yet. It's been putting out solar flares today, and has a chance to put out X-class flares. It's also aimed at the Earth. So friends to the North may get some amazing auroras, and everyone might get lousy radio/cell/WiFi reception for the next few days. We'll see. But it's lovely to see in its own environs:
You can also see some more huge prominences on the edge of the disc, including one that wraps around the Sun's horizon and is visible against the face. Usually against the face they look black because the motion is mostly sideways to us, but this one must be flowing really fast to have Doppler shifted back into the filter's bandpass region. That's another thing I've seen for the first time.