Observe The Sun Safely - Never look at the Sun without a proper filter!
Solar Programs are held 1st Sunday of every Month 2:00-4:00 PM at Houge Park weather permitting
Counting The Spots
Today the International Sunspot Number (SN) was 76 based on 24 stations whie NOAA's, which always rings in higher, was 104.
Carl Reisinger had a beautiful duel scope setup today with one housing a Baader Herschel Wedge and green filter and the other holding Seymour front end filter. We counted the centered 4 major sunspot groups plus 17 sunspots - giving a SN of 57.
Madhusudan (Left) and Carl (Right) chatting next to his cool duel setup. It tracks the sun allowing one to up scope magnification to count sunspots and get very good views up the penumbra around sunspot centers. Nice areas of Plage (active regions) were seen today.
If we included the group at the edge (see below image) than our SN woud have been 67. If we correct this count for using a 4-inch scope and account for weather (predominately thermals) than we get a SN number nearly spot on with the International Sunspot Number. Unlike NOAA's count, The International SN stays true to the historical data and method invented by Rudalf Wolf to log daily SN:
SN = k [10 x Total # sunspot groups + Total # of spots]
Today's (August 4th) Sunspots click to enlarge!
Today's Sun in H-Alpha - click to enlarge!
Gabre Gessesse hung out with us today and as usual, we had a nice crowd of folks and families who stopped by:
Stellar Cheers!
