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.
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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 leading "10" is 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. |
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Not much change since yesterday. 21st September 2005. |
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My first view of the Sun since spot 10808 disappeared and spot 10810 appeared. 20th September 2005. |
| 9th September 2005. The grand old spot, 10808, is moving into a better view from Earth. It has grown considerably since it disappeared as spot 10798 seventeen days ago (see four images below). |
| 8th September 2005. Two new spots have appeared. The bigger spot, 10808, is believed to be spot 10798 coming round again. |
| 26th August 2005. 10803 is moving into a better view. 10802 has disappeared and 10804 has appeared. These tiny spots are playing games with us!. |
| 25th August 2005. A new, complex group has appeared from the far side today, numbered 10803. 10801 has gone and 10802 has appeared. 10798 has moved round to the far side and is no longer visible. |
| 23rd August 2005. Since my last image (two days ago) spot 10800 has developed into a nice formation, and today I have captured the new spot 10801. This is my last view of 10798. |
| 21st August 2005. A dramatic change since my last image. 10798 has grown into a very respectable formation. A new group, 10800, has appeared as a weak group. |
| A combination of the four pictures of sunspot 10797 on the 15th to 18th August. |
| 18th August 2005. The same spots that were visible yesterday. 10797 continues to shrink and 10798 remains insignificant. |
| 17th August 2005. The same two spots that were visible yesterday, but 10797 is beginning to fade. |
| 16th August 2005. The same two spots that were visible yesterday, but my image of 10797 is better here. |
| 15th August 2005. Two spots are visible. 10797 is a large and complex group, whereas 10798 is a miserable little thing. |
| 8th August 2005. Spot 10792 is about to disappear round the eastern limb, and a new spot, 10796 has appeared since my last picture (below) but will also disappear round the limb quite soon too. Is there a new spot forming on the same latitude as 10974 and as far from the western limb as 10974 is from the eastern limb? |
| 3rd August 2005. |
| 9th July 2005. Three days after the picture below. |
| 6th July 2005. |
| 13th June 2005, two weeks after the picture below. |
| 31st May 2005, four days after the picture below. |
| On 27th May 2005 the Sun was displaying a particularly complex sunspot and a new one that wasn't visible the day before. |
| Sunspot activity should be declining in 2005, but that doesn't mean the Sun will be inactive. From time to time spots are to be expected and in late April this large spot appeared. Click on the image to see more details. |
| I experimented to see if colour filters would improve my images of the Sun and its spots. This page shows the results. |