by Michael Swartz
I set up my scope and took a look before starting work on my sandwich. First I noticed again that with the Takahashi Extender-Q mounted between the hi-res module and the blocking filter I had a nice flat field and higher resolution. The contrast was excellent.
I noticed that the two large spots in the center of the sun looked as if they were recessed in a canyon or gorge. The swirling solar surface around the pair of spots appeared to swirl, rise up and then fall down creating this canyon. There were also bright active spots and streaks that kind of connected the spots and formed what looked like a river winding through this canyon. It was quite awesome.
Around the perimeter of the sun there were a number of active prominences that visibly changed shape and size in just the hour and a half that I was there. I noticed on the left side of the sun (from my perspective) that there was this very bright orange bump. And as I watched it I noticed that after only 5 or 10 minutes it had doubled in size. So since I get excited about these things I called Jim Everitt and Bob Hess to let them know to get their scopes out. Over the next 30 minutes this bright orange thing got larger, then widened and then began to rise up from the edge. Soon a large band was visible and it began to rise higher from the edge and straightened and then started to curve up like it was beginning to form a loop. But before it could get to high one side began to separate. Then I noticed that the longer side seemed to break up and fan out. With in 10 minutes after that it was no longer visible. Again, the entire event lasted less than an hour. During that time some of the other prominences had very noticeable changes but they were not as dramatic as that event. It was really fun to watch.
A few people that were passing by stopped for a look and a few people from inside Togo's came out to have a look. But other than that it was pretty quite. I enjoyed my sandwich, a soda, the sun and a nice gentle cool breeze .
As a reminder, anyone who has any kind of a solar scope is welcome to join me Friday afternoon at Houge Park. Let's get a solar thing going on over there.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Nov 03, 2004 13:13:40 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 20, 2005 23:59:02 PT