Did some more solar observing today. Here is the report.
| Observer | Dave Staples |
|---|---|
| Date | 5 April 2001 |
| Time | 12:15-13:10 PDT |
| Location | Petaluma, Ca |
| Weather | beautiful with slight breeze |
| Equip. | C8 with Baader full aperture filter, 32mm, 26mm and 10mm plossls, 2x barlow |
| Seeing | 8/10 |
I have a drawing of the full solar disk at 63x and of 9415 at 203x, I wasn't sure if it would be appropriate to attach a JPEG of the drawing to this email. Maybe someone could give me some guidance on attachments. If anybody is interested I can send the drawing in a private mail, the file size is 47KB.
Seeing limited me to about 200x today, probably more due to scope equilibrium than the atmosphere as seeing got better towards the end of the session.
Group 9415 has rotated well into view now and is the most complex spot I have observed yet (missed out on the best opportunity for 9393) with the main component being 4 large spots in 2 pairs. The first pair has a small "D" shaped spot with a cigar shaped spot right next to it vertically with a small linear spot between the two. Both are surrounded by an "iron filing" fuzziness with a myriad of smaller spots sprinkled about. The other pair is up and to the right of the first pair and spaced like a pair of eyes. The left "eye" is a rounded triangle and the right is a fat comma shape, again surrounded by the fuzziness. The two groups seem to be linked by a thin line of fuzziness (drawn in the picture).
I was able to identify 6 groups, the most interesting aside from 9415 being 9414, 2 small spot with a half circle of smaller spots around them. Also observed were 9404, 9407, 9406(possibly) and 9407. I also observed 2 other groups that I couldn't find identifiers for. One is a small faint spot on the limb above 9415 and another near the visual center line and at the upper edge.
Just like last time, I had a passel'o people stop by with the most common question being, "Is that really the sun...COOL". It's pretty neat to see the progression of the spots across the face of the sun. I'm getting hooked on this...picked a good time, being near solar maximum and all.