by Michael Swartz
Sunday was a good day, a very good day for solar observing. The air was calm, dry and cool but not cold. Coyote Creek park at Hellyer Ave. and Hwy 101 is pretty close to my old high school and I have not been there in more than 20 years. I was surprised that it is such a nice park.
I set up my scopes, umbrella and table at a turn out on one of the two roads that lead from the entrance gate where I would be visible from the entrance just in case any of you came out looking for me. I was there from 12:00pm to 4:00pm and had a very nice time viewing. Alex and his family and some of their friends came by. A few people from the SJAA came by. A few bicyclists and people who were just driving by stopped and did some viewing. I probably had 20 or 30 people stop by. It was a nice comfortable and quite day.
The sun only had one sunspot group but there were lots of little filaments all around, two very long ones and a nice array of prominences around the limb.
The seeing was pretty soft today. There was a lot of upper atmosphere current I think. But during the moments of calm and good seeing the sun looked very good. It felt warm and it was nice to be out. The single sunspot group has been growing. Yesterday it looked like the main spot split. Today one of the pair was noticeably larger than the other, almost Jupiter sized. Still lots of filaments, two large prominences and plenty of other surface turbulence. One prominence looked as if it were something being blown off of the surface but then later looked like a normal but somewhat larger than normal prominence. The really long filament seemed longer but more curved today. Quite interesting. One guy who had stopped by yesterday and looked at the sun through the clouds was also there today. He looked at the sun today through a clear sky and was quite blown away by it. He said with a voice filled with awe "I had no idea I could see it like that". That was a fun moment.
About 20 curious shoppers stopped by, my brother stopped by and a few Borders employees came out to see what was going on. One old guy was a ham operator and he went on and on about how he knew the sun was active lately because of all the extra noise on the ham radio band. It was so noisy it sounded like it was raining he said. That was kind of funny.
That'ts all for now.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Dec 21, 2004 14:22:52 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 24, 2005 19:42:41 PT