The Sun on April 18, 2024
April 18, 2024
Tags: Solar Astronomy, Astronomy, Astrophotography, Photography
WARNING: When observing the Sun, be sure to do so safely! Use only equipment that is designed specifically for that purpose and is produced by reputable manufacturers. Follow their directions closely. Do not improvise your own filter material for solar observing. If you are careless, you risk instant and permanent vision loss or injury.
Yesterday I commented that the Sun, which has been coming out of a bit of a lull in activity, looked better in white light as opposed to the view in the H-alpha telescope. Today the opposite was true.
The star of the show today (no pun intended) was a massive prominence that has appeared in the last 24 hours. The chromosphere also showed some energetic plage regions, which appear as white areas in the following image:
I also took an image of the Sun in white light. Using the very same exposure settings and postproduction edits, here is our nearest star as it appeared yesterday and today:
The Sun completes one revolution in about 27 days. In the two images above, you can see the slight progress in that rotation from top left to bottom right . Also visible is the evolution of sunspot groups, particularly the one in the middle of the solar disk.