I had a small change I wanted to make to the solar filter holder that I’d created, and it required 3D printing a new part – so of course, the printer started printing very undependably and in a weird manner, and it took me no small amount of time to find it and fix it. Once I’d done so and finally got the new part printed and ready, the sun viewing conditions went to crap.
So finally, this afternoon, there were some breaks in the clouds and I made the attempt.
It should be said that, naturally, just about the entire sky was devoid of clouds except for right where the sun was – and those were quite slow-moving. But it was better than this morning’s overcast, and complete openings did slide past from time to time. I finally got some unobscured images of the sun’s face.
That’s… a lot of sunspots; Over a dozen active regions, when seen in high resolution. Sunspots are indications of heightened coronal activity, which produces solar arcs and prominences (which I’m not going to capture without some very specialized and expensive filters,) as well as the charged particles that produce the Aurora Borealis and Australis. This explains why I’ve been getting aurora alerts on my phone for the past several days, even when they didn’t look likely to reach down to these latitudes. Tonight, however, might be different. Plus we’re still in the Pleiades active period.
I feel obligated to tell you that I named the above image, “Clearasol.” You can’t compete and you know it.