The sky was clear, and the wind was blowing with gusts of 15mph. Videography of the solar disk was easy. Below are two tunings of the solar rig – the first one highlights the sunspots.
The major sunspot groups visible in the image above appear in a gallery following the full disk image that features the prominences, filaments, and plages below.
Above, you can see solar prominences around the sun’s disk. Today, there are also many dark, wavy filaments on the suns face; these too are prominences but seen from above rather from the side. The fact that the sunspots and filaments appear dark on the solar disk means that they consist of material that is cooler than surrounding material. Yet, against the darkness of space, they appear very bright on the sun’s limb (edge).
Solar plages, the bright yellow areas around the sunspot groups, are very active areas of the solar chromosphere that will periodically flare releasing bursts of x-ray and gamma radiation.
The major sunspot groups are AR3814, AR3811, and AR3815. There are other groups visible in larger instruments, of course.
The prominences are shown starting from the northwestern limb (upper right of the solar disk).
