On Monday, we had clear enough skies for me to go out and check on the condition of the sun, or more specifically, the sunspots thereon. I could not actually make any out in the viewfinder, nor on the monitor when I had unloaded the card.
I considered myself a victim of bad timing, since we’ve been having so much activity in this form for the past couple of years, and the reason for that is, we’re around the solar maximum, or the peak of sunspot and coronal activity that occurs every twelve years. Ah, well, so it goes.
And then I came across an article that confirms that the sun is free from spots, for the first time in over 1,300 days; the last period where none were observed was just shy of four years ago in June 2022. This is a little more in line with the solar cycles, since the minimum of coronal activity should have been around 2020 (well, for the sun, anyway – it was a little different on Earth.) So while I was thinking I caught nothing, I actually snagged something mildly notable, purely by chance. Go me.
The article also says that yesterday, a new spot was spotted, uh, located, whatever, so this period seems to have been quite brief, and for sure, the peak never drops off that quickly, so more a matter of happenstance than likely any indication of anything odd happening up there. But as the overcast lightened into heavy haze this afternoon, I went out and tried again, though my exposure was set higher this time – normally, I aim to underexpose by about 2/3 stop to keep the solar disk from starting to bleach out, but with the haze, I left it at normal. As the haze thinned, this meant it was overexposing slightly.
I still wasn’t seeing any sunspots, and thought that perhaps the exposure was to blame, but then, there was a little smudge that showed in the same position through several frames, proving that it wasn’t a factor of the haze nor anything on my lens (since these were all handheld and thus the sun appears in a different location in the frame among all of them.) Let’s go to full-resolution for the detail:
Yep, there it is, just peeking over the top. Given that it’s not down towards the ‘side,’ it is likely to rotate a little more into view but still remain very close to the edge, since this is not terribly far from the sun’s pole. I’ll try to stay on top of it and see what happens.
Unfortunately, this meant that I blew the holiday off, since February 25th is Confirm Nothing Day. I confirmed nothing two days ago, but today, I confirmed something, which would be grounds for merciless teasing from my friends if they weren’t reluctant to admit that they witnessed this today. Though some might ask if I actually have any friends, which I will neither confirm nor deny.
Of course, if I simply delayed this post until Thursday instead, I meet the requirements of the holiday, at least in a left-handed manner, because while I confirmed that the new spot was indeed there on the 25th, I would not be publicly confirming that I had until the 26th. Though that’s kind of a half-ass solution…