November 5, 2011 Solar Viewing Session - Sunspot AR1339


Warning: Never look at the sun directly with a telescope or binoculars. Only view using proper filters, solar telescope or projection method.

Over the suns Northeastern side is a large sunspot grouping spanning an area of 100,000 km wide with each primary dark spot about the size of the Earth that became visible to Earth on November 2. Largest sunspot in years. It's been slowly making it's way face on to Earth over the past couple of days.

November 2 it blasted off a M4-flare at 2200 UT which hurled a coronal mass ejection into the solar system, but it wasn't aimed at us. On November 3around 2027 UT the sunspot unleashed a X-Flare which created waves of ionization in Earth's upper atmosphere which slightly affected radio waves in Europe and the Americas, but not much happening in our region as far as Aurora's go. Since November 3 the sunspot has been quiet, but that doesn't mean that it's done blasting off flares, and as it aims towards Earth over the days any blasts could possibly result in Aurora's if strong enough will be visible to us here in the Adirondacks.

In these pictures is the main AR1339 which you can't miss, also the sunspots 1338. In one of the images I marked which is which. These are projected through my Astromaster 114EQ telescope with the 12.5mm eyepiece making it a magnification of 80x. Pictures taken and edited by Rachael Alexandra.Some trees were in the way of the sun and you can see their shadow in the images.







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