Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

Science

More Solar Activity

Sunspots

There is a parade of sunspots crossing near the solar equator today. I went out this morning and captured the sunspots with my usual setup of the Canon SX-40 through the cheap little solar filter from Rainbow Symphony. Click on the image to enlarge.

AR 1974 is pointed directly at the Earth and could produce flares. AR 1975 and AR 1976 look to be more intense and will be pointed earthward in a day or so. This could mean auroras in the arctic, communications and electrical grid blackouts or enhanced radio communications as in Ham Radio. Or, it could mean nothing at all.

We have seen from the past that the presence of sunspots generally means warmer temperatures on earth while the absence of them for prolonged periods tend to bring cold periods called minima. Some examples are the Maunder Minimum, the Dalton Minimum and the 1900 Minimum. There was an unnamed minimum in the 1960’s that had Time and Newsweek predicting a new ice age. But, we know how the news media wants to bend things around to capitalize on sensationalism to sell copy, I guess. Or maybe to put forth a political agenda. I think we all know how the media operates these days.

Reference: Correlating Sunspots to Global Climate.

12 Feb 2014 by Astronomy Global Warming Science

Solar Activity

Sunspots 01FEB2014

Huge sunspot AR 1967 erupted with an M6 class solar flare a couple of days ago. It is not aimed directly at Earth, but scientists predict a 45 percent chance of auroras at high latitudes when the CME glances off the magnetosphere tomorrow. I photographed these two active sunspot regions around noon local time in Arizona. Solar north is up. Click on the image to enlarge.

There was a larger event in late December when the prediction for auroras was such that perhaps they could be seen at lower latitudes, but alas, nothing here at latitude 34. It is possible at this latitude (I have seen auroras in Southern California) so if we live long enough we may see them again here in our Arizona dark skies.

01 Feb 2014 by Astronomy Science

Spots, But Low Solar Activity

Spots

During my daily web browsing, I saw this note about today’s solar activity on SpaceWeather.com:

(ALMOST NO) CHANCE OF FLARES:

Two sunspots facing Earth (AR1934 and AR1936) have ‘beta-gamma’ magnetic fields that harbor energy for strong flares. Both sunspots have been quiet for days, however, and they show no signs of an imminent eruption. This has prompted NOAA forecasters to place low odds on flares today: a 25% chance of M-flares and a 1% chance X-flares.

I took the above image today of the sun and annotated it with sunspot numbers for those visible to my camera. Click on the image to enlarge.

27 Dec 2013 by Astronomy Science

On-Line Solar Movie Maker

Sunspots 12/06/2013This morning, I browsed my usual daily visits on the internet. When I got to the webpage at SpaceWeather.com, I noticed several sunspots were visible on the “Daily Sun” feature in the left sidebar. That made me have the urge to go out and capture an image of the sun over Arizona to see if I could resolve any of the sunspots. There were three distinct spots in my image, which I labeled, as seen on the right. The solar north pole is at about the ten o’clock point in the image I made. I didn’t bother to rotate the solar image to align the pole at the top as I sometimes do. Click on the image to enlarge.

I visited the SOHO Sunspot page to get the designation numbers of the sunspots in the photo, I noticed a link to a new feature called Helioviewer which purported to allow users anywhere make their own custom images and movies. After fooling with the website a bit, I made the video below to document the spots in my image. The motion starts about 24 hours before advancing to how the sun looked today. Solar north is up and the recording was made through a hydrogen alpha (or equivalent) filter. The bright spots are the location of the spots in my image above. See this screenshot from the Helioviewer site for reference.


06 Dec 2013 by Astronomy Environment Science

Desert Solar Optics Phenomena


This three-panel slideshow contains amateur photographs of some of the things we have seen in the sky over the last few days. The first and second panels show “sun dogs” and the last panel shows a circumhelical arc, all of which are rainbow-colored patches of refracted sunlight through ice crystals high in the Earth’s atmosphere. I used my hand to block out the direct sunlight in the last panel.

Damsel caught a beautiful photo of the sun and optics about a year ago. Click on the images to advance the slideshow.

29 Nov 2013 by Arizona Astronomy Science

AR1734 – “Great Horned Sunspot”

Great Horned Sunspot

I read about this sunspot on SpaceWeather.com today. Seeing the article prompted me to get out the tripod and solar filter out and try to get a picture of my own. In the enlarged version of this image, you can see that I managed to capture the structure of this unusual-looking sunspot (inset). Click on the image to enlarge.

From SpaceWeather.com

Around the world, amateur astronomers are snapping pictures of behemoth sunspot AR1734 as it crosses the solar disk. In Buffalo, New York, photographer Alan Friedman noticed something when he rotated his picture 90 degrees. “Sunspot 1734 has a definite owlish look!” “But who gives a hoot,” he continued, “this grand active region looks fantastic from every perspective.”

The owl could be poised to explode. Sunspot AR1734 has a ‘beta-gamma’ magnetic field that harbors energy for M-class solar flares, almost-certainly Earth-directed because the sunspot is facing our planet. NOAA forecasters estimate a 45% chance of M-flares on May 6th.

06 May 2013 by Astronomy Environment Photography Science

Quadruple Conjunction

The sun, Venus, Mars and Uranus are all gathered in the sky in tight formation. Unfortunately, without the aid of the scientific instrumentation on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), nobody can observe the event because of the sun’s glare. The animation below shows the event with a solar shield in place as seen by SOHO. Refer to the link below the animation to identify the planets. (Hint: Uranus is pretty hard to see in the noise and clutter in the animation.)

Quadruple Conjunction

Excerpt of the description of the event from SpaceWeather.com:

DAYLIGHT ALIGNMENT OF PLANETS: Venus, Mars and Uranus are gathering for a remarkable alignment. But don’t bother looking for the conjunction; it is happening in the daylight sky within a few degrees of the glaring sun. Using an opaque disk to block the glare, coronagraphs onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) are able to track the planets.

Venus and Uranus will cross paths within 1.5 degrees of the sun on March 27-28. Mars and Venus have their own very close encounter on April 6-7. Mars will be so close to the sun throughout the month of April that it will limit NASA’s contact with the Mars rovers and orbiters.

25 Mar 2013 by Astronomy Science

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