Astronomy Buff

Oh How I Wish For Solar Maximum

by Tony on October 25th, 2007

I love my Coronado PST Halpha telescope. I also love my new iOptron mount that guides it. Now I wish the Sun would cooperate and give me something a little more interesting to look at.

As you may know, the Sun has an 11 year activity cycle. During its maximum, you can see all kinds of cool filament structures on the disk, bright active regions over sunspots, huge promimences on the limb and all kinds of other cool things. The picture at left is how things are right now, this is an halpha image of the Sun taken last Monday. Not very much there, huh?

As you can see in the diagram on the right, we are at solar minimum, the doldrums so to speak. The number of sunspots is at its low point in the activity cycle and things will be this way for a couple of years before they pick up again.

Counting sunspots has always been an easy way to measure solar activity, but by themselves they don’t contribute much to total solar output. Rather, it’s the magnetic activity that accompanies the sunspots that produce the impressive and dramatic solar events like coronal mass ejections, solar flares and prominence eruptions.

In other words, the cool stuff in the eyepiece of my PST.

Here’s a picture of the difference:

Halpha images: MLSO

I know, tell me about it.

Ah well, I can wait three to five more years for the cool stuff, I’m not going anywhere. In the meantime, there’s still the occasional active region and quiescent prominence to help pass the time.

Technorati Tags: coronado solar filters, observing, solar activity cycle, sun

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POSTED IN: observing the night sky, solar system