WARNING! The Sun is extremely dangerous. Looking at it
with any sort of optical aid will result in instant blindness.
Look here to
see how I do it.
Here are three pictures of sunspot group 11164 taken on 4, 7, and 8 March 2011.
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Sunspot Designations |
Sunspots and Active Regions are numbered by the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and started on 5th January 1972. These numbers now exceed 10000 but often the first or the first two digits are omitted. The designations of current sunspots can be found on the SOHO site. A most useful archive of diagrams of the Sun showing the positions and designations of sunspots on a daily basis right back to January 1992 is available from The Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii. This link will take you to their archive page from where you can select a given image by date or browse by month. I find this particularly useful if I have imaged an interesting spot after some days of cloud, and I can look back and see when the spot appeared. The Institute also has recent pictures of the Sun's activity in a number of formats. |
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Sunspot group 11164 taken when it was near the centre of the disc. Date and Time: 4 March 2011, 14:12 UT Camera: DMK 21AF04 Telescope: ETX125 at prime focus Capture: ICCapture. 1/367", gain 668, 3600 frames Processing: Registax. 123 frames stacked. Wavelets 1,2 = 10, histogram 35-205 |
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Here is the same group taken 3 days later as it approached the eastern limb. You can see how the spots have changed in the three days. Out of interest, the mouseover image is one taken with my LX200. The interesting point is that the image is red although it is taken through Baader solar film as is the whole-Sun picture for this day which is not red. But it is a different filter made with a different piece of film. Date and Time: 7 March 2011, 13:59 UT Camera: DMK 21AF04 Telescope: ETX125 Capture: ICCapture. 1/618", gain 285, 1799 frames Processing: Registax. 98 frames stacked. Wavelets 1-2 = 10, histogram 0-223 |
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Here it is taken the next day as the group is about to disappear round the limb. Date and Time: 8 March 2011, 12:10 UT Camera: DMK 21AF04 Telescope: 270mm SLR lens Capture: ICCapture. 1/436", gain 480, 3600 frames Processing: Registax. 100 frames stacked. Wavelets 1-2 = 10, histogram 0-190 |