SunSpot_AR2781_20201108_LUM_IR_UV_CH4_Composite_ReSizedDown2HD

Object Details: The attached composite shows the Sun as it appeared on November 8, 2020 through two of the scopes in our observatory at my home here in upstate, NY. Although it's been snowing & cloudy for months and one of the 'origami-style' outriggers of our RoR observatory remains locked in a two foot thick block of ice & snow, early last November we had a highly unusual streak of 7
days containing at least some time when the sun was visible.

As luck would have it, during that time at huge active region / sunspot group was transiting the
visible surface. Although the seeing was horrible this particular day I was fortunate to have enough of time to utilize all wavelengths I've been using lately. Therefore taking advantage of the fact that it is now raining, I'd thought I'd check them out and try some quick processing.

As can been seen, at this time AR2781 consisted of a huge single spot, larger in diameter than the Earth, trailing down through smaller active regions to end in two additional large spots. Comparing it quickly to a shots taken a few days earlier, although the seeing was much worse this day, it appears the group may be elongating, with the two larger spots near the bottom also separating in the horizontal direction and the core of the largest spot at the top seems to be developing a 'bulls-eye like' appearance. The latter being most evident in the color version of the Infrared image, I'm assuming this is related to, or a result of, the light-bridges mentioned in the shots taken two days earlier, a link to which is attached here:

www.flickr.com/photos/homcavobservatory/50657578913/

Image Details: The attached was taken by Jay Edwards at the HomCav Observatory at my home here in upstate, NY on November 8, 2020. The top images were taken with a lum filter, while those at the bottom used infrared (IR), ultraviolet (UV) and methane (CH4) filters (all in addition to an over-the-aperture' off-axis home-made Baader material white light solar filter).

The full disk image, utilizing a Canon 700D controlled by APT & a full aperture Kendricks light light filter on an ED80T CF (i.e. an Orion 80mm, f/6 carbon-fiber triplet apochromatic refractor), and a 0.8X Televue field flattener / focal reducer, is meant merely as a reference for location and it is a single frame shot at 1/4000 and ISO 100.

The 'closeup' 8-inch shots were taken using an ASI290MC 'planetary camera / auto-guider' controlled by SharpCap Pro on a vintage 1970, 8-inch, f/7 Criterion newtonian reflector with the above mentioned homemade, off-axis Baader white-light solar filter. Taken as video clips, each is a stack of best several hundred frames out of a few thousand taken for each clip.

Both of these scopes are mounted on and tracked by a Losmandy G-11 running a Gemini 2 control system and the images were processed using a combination of AS3, Registax & PSP. The UV, IR & CH4 images have also been duplicated and having then had their luminance channels extracted, are placed next to their corresponding 'one-shot-color' images.

Processed in a combination of Astrostakkert, Registax, PixInsight & PaintShopPro, as presented here the composite has been resized down to HD resolution and the bit depth lowered to 8 bits per channel.

Taken on: March 11, 2021

Tags:

HomCav

Observatory

Sunspot

2781

white-light

Baader

Kendricks

infrared

filter

Orion

ED80T

80mm

f/6

aprochromatic $Everybody's photos tagged with refractor$ refractor

8-inch

f/7

Criterion

newtonian

reflector

Ultraviolet

CH4

Methane

specialized

filters

ZWO

ASI290MC

planetary

camera

auto-guider

Losmandy

G-11

mount

Gemini

control

system

SharpCap

APT

PixInsight

PaintShopPro

astronomy

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Sets appears in: • Solar System (Solar, Lunar, Comets, Planetary, Eclipses, Conjunctions) • Solar

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