There were scattered cirrus clouds this afternoon when I looked at the sun. I tried the solar telescope with an eyepiece and later with a Televue barlow that I had purchased years ago for use with another instrument. Both were unsatisfying. The plain eyepiece view gives a solar image too small to examine individual features like prominences and sunspots. The barlow, a negative lens that magnifies the effective power of other eyepieces, was incompatible with the solar scope’s optics. Alas! I used the solar/planetary camera instead.
Below is today’s solar disk image. The large sunspot AR3784 continues to march toward the eastern solar limb. The emerging group AR39790 and a larger sunspot AR3792 now appear on the western limb below the solar equator. There are smaller, less remarkable, sunspot groups scattered over the disk.
Below are cropped images that emphasize the prominences at the eastern and western solar limbs as well as the larger sunspot groups.
