October Sun 1x Visible Sunspots

OCTOBER 1st

Visible Sunspots over next couple of days!

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

Sunspot or active region AR 1582 is a 1x spot. And so is AR 1579 which is just barely visible. Is it to the right or left? :)

Over next couple of days one will still need good eyes and a good solar filter to see these (and welding glass wont cut it). Solar glasses are good, Solar Cards better. 

Malika Carter: Sunspot image with her eyepiece projection system. Click photo to enlarge.

For those of you who have H-alpha scopes: Good prominences at limb particularly at ~5 O'clock refactor view -  prominence drapes over the photosphere creating a sinuous filament.

Clear Magnitude -26.73 skies Michael Packer

Shuttle Endeavour Flyover

Lots of folks gathered at NASA Aimes for the Flyover of Space Shuttle Endeavour.

Beautiful Day  - Beautiful spaceship. 

Flyover Video and Crowd Cam Here:

https://plus.google.com/photos/115436722413756146284/albums/5790716943897359409

 

Great Education and Outreach Booths:

Almaden Valley Art & Wine Festival

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

Thousands of folks and families gathered for the 2012 Almaden Valley Art & Wine Festival sponsored by the Almaden Valley Women's Club. And For a couple of years now SJAA has been apart of the festival.

Below are some pics of SJAA at the event starting off with Ed Wong (Left) talking with a patron.

These two girls took time out from their practice for their dance show to see the surface of sun in H-alpha. That got the whole gang to come over and take a look.

Below, woman viewing our star and Rob Jaworski who organized SJAA's participation in the festival

 Very happy girl who got too see our sun and two sunspots

 It is always a good day when there are sunspots visible and H-Alpha flares. We had two sunspots and although we had prominences all around the solar disk, a decent sized one plus filament were also present.

Malika Carter below showing sunspots with her eyepiece projection system. 

Michael (left) Bill O'Neil (center) and a two very interested guys checking out Solar Prominences..

All in all a great day for SJAA outreach - thanks to all who helped!

Loaner Scope & Quick STARt Status Page

SJAA offers all of it's members the opportunity to borrow various types of loaner scopes.   The challenge with any such program is the ability to provide a current listing of scopes and their availability.  
 
I am pleased to say that we have developed a system which will provide 100% transparency.

When you go to the SJAA main website - please note the link circled in red below.

After clicking on Telescopes/Mentoring link - it takes you to the Loaner Scope Program status page as seen below:

Above is a screenshot of an embedded Google spreadsheet that is opened up to the Advanced Loaner Scope Status page.  This page will show you the up-to-date status of all of the clubs loaner scopes.   When you send me a request via email for a particular scope I will put your name in the "On Deck" column, when you pick it up the status will change to "Out on loan" and the due date will be noted in the Comments column.  Should the scope be out on loan already, your name will stay in the On Deck column until it becomes available and you pick it up.
 
Another benefit that the club offers to our new members is the ability to participate in the Quick STARt program.    To see an overview of the program please click on Quick START (QS) Program tab.  After doing so - it brings you to:

Those new SJAA members who have requested (or accepted in invitation) to attend the next session will have their names listed.  If you don't see your name on this list please send me an email.

The QS Scopes tab lists all of the scopes dedicated to this program and their current status.

Please keep in mind that the scopes above are available to "ALL" members to borrow.   The QS  program participants get 1st priority though.   Please email me if you are interested in checking out a QS program scope and it's related items as described in this previous post.
http://sanjoseastronomy.blogspot.com/2012/07/quick-start-gets-upgrade.html

We also would love to hear from you on how to make this program better.  Are there any scopes or items you want the club to put into the program?

Thanks for your support.

Regards,
Dave Ittner

SJAA at Cambrian Festival 2012

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

A beautiful sunny day at the Celebrate Cambrian Festival brought out lots families to learn about their local community. And the SJAA was proud to be a part of it! 

Lots of kids got to see the sun starting with an eyepiece projections system, 

then moving to an amateur scope (with solar filter) to see sunspots in detail,

 

and then ending with views of H-Alpha flairs, prominences, in the club's hydrogen alpha telescope.  Lots of "oohs" "aahhs" and "cool" at every station. 

 

And lots of thanks to our volunteers: Tom Sharkey, Teruo Utsumi, Malika Carter, Rob Jaworski, Michael Packer, Bill and Susan O'Neil and Tracy Avent-Costanz. You guys made it happen!

All in all, hundreds of folks easy got to see and learn about astronomy - if not in their own back yard - very close! We hope see see a few of them at Houge Park at upcoming public star party events!

The Sun

Useful Solar Links: 

Real Time e-mail Solar Flare Alert:
http://www.ips.gov.au/mailman/listinfo/ips-flare-alert
Everything about the Today's Sun at a Glance:
http://www.solarham.net/
Today's Space Weather with Sunspot Count:
http://www.spaceweather.com/
Solar Influences Data Center - SIDC keeper of the International Sunspot Number
http://sidc.oma.be/LatestSWData/LatestSWData.php 
Superb overview of Solar features - a must read:
http://lnk.nu/eaas.co.uk/24ct.php
NOAA Glossary of Solar Terms:
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/info/glossary.html
Observing the Sun in H-Alpha - Compiled by David Knisely":

www.icstars.com/HTML/SolarSection/HAlpha/OBSERVINGTHESUNHAlpha3.html

Killer Video! - Depth Detail of Umbra & Penumbra with Surrounding Photosphere Granules

 

 

Click on image to enlarge:

Solar Observing August 5th

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

The are a so many objects up in the night sky for amateur astronomers to enjoy, travel to with his/her scope and learn something new. Yet it is the same way with out single star up in the day sky, The solar cycle generates new sunspots and flares of beauty, size and ominous power. Today many of us saw hands-down "thee" longest filament, prominence, h-alpha flare, projected on the solar disk we have ever seen. Winding over the disk of the sun it easily spanned 1/3 of the entire solar face. if the filament was stretched out, it would easily span 1/2 the solar disk or some 50 Earth diameters!

While all of us at Houge were viewing this and thinking about Curiosity's Landing expected in the evening, SJAA member Malika was actually at JPL enjoying the event and showing sunspots to public. Her Sunspotter eyepiece projection system beautifully captured all 6 major sunspots: 

Click on a image to enlarge. Then compare the two by clicking icons at bottom of view screen

Right On!