by Jane Houston Jones
I have a couple solar scopes out on the back deck this afternoon, my homemade 6-inch f/10 solar 'scope and an Orion short tube 80 with an Orion solar filter on it. We also have our TV Ranger out, pointed at a trail (with hikers) on Mount Tamalpais.
The sun has alot of great features showing in the photosphere this afternoon. There are many large faculae, or bright areas near the limb of the sun. Then there are dozens of groups (actually 224 spots all together, but who is counting?) of sunspots in pretty clusters, trails and clumps. One clump looks like M11, the wild duck galactic cluster. This image, http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/ shows where the faculae are located today, associated with sunspot group 9957, 9958, 9954 and 9969.
When our Coronado filter arrives (in a few weeks, I hope) we'll have to learn a bunch of new terms to describe what we'll see in the chromosphere, things like plage and spicules. I already know about prominences and filaments. Coronado filters had a nice collection of their h-alpha filters and telescopes on display yesterday at RTMC, next to the nifty Sunspotter solar projection telescope, and other manufacturers telescopes and/or filters were set up in the same area.
Wm Phelps had his solar powered solar scope set telescope in telescope alley giving knockout h-alpha views by day and mooning by night.