Astroblog: Sunspot 822

Friday, November 18, 2005

Sunspot 822

Sunspot group 822 is now large enough to see with safe solar projection techniques, such as pinhole projection or binocular projection. The above image was taken using binocular projection. It is not the best as the Sun shone through a brief break in the clouds as it was setting and I didn't have time to set up a proper screen, so I whacked a bit of white paper on the water tank and grabbed a quick image (but distorted due to the angle of the Sun to the tank). Davep has some notes on seeing 822 using projection techniques.

822 has been firing off more M class flares, but it is too early to tell if they will head our way and produce aurora.

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 11:47 pm

Comments:

Ian (and Dave), you inspired me to get my binoculars out yesterday and try for myself. I managed to see the main sunspot and the smaller one off to the side.

Later I got a look through a PST which was even cooler. It is so much fun to change the observing wavelength with one of those.

# posted by