Today’s H-alpha image shows the most prominences along the disk’s western limb. Cropped images of the prominences appear at the bottom of this page.
The sunspot image shows that the emerging active region in the NE quadrant has been designated 3959 (not 3957 as I had speculated yesterday). Active regions get assigned a designation as they emerge anywhere on the sun’s disk.
Below is an enlarged area from near the central region of the solar disk. The “texture” that the enlargement consists of convection cells of solar plasma called granules. Individual granules appear as polygonal cells with lighter centers and darker edges. The centers are plasma rising outward to the sun’s photosphere and the darker edges are plasma that has cooled (relatively speaking) and is returning inward.
The gallery below features today’s western limb prominences.
