A 5 Star SJAA Weekend

Saturday SJAA had personal infrared tour of the SOFIA program with Marita Beard who was 1 of 6 teachers invited to board the flying observatory. This was also SJAA's kickoff of it's pre-meeting social equipped with coffee, cake (Happy BD Marita) and a crowed of amateur Astronomers. Saturday was also Super moon. Robert Duvall shared a pic of this Moon (below) and also a stellar image of the Sunspots visible Sunday.

Super Moon - click image to enlarge

Image by SJAA Member R. Duvall

 

Great Sunspot group - click image for high rez! 

Image by SJAA Member R. Duvall 

Robert Armstrong looking through Ed's tack sharp solar scope:

Robert Duvall with solar scope camera setup

Sunday was also SJAA's Auction - Lot's of people, scopes and pizza. Thanks to all for making this auction a deal of fun.

click image to enlarge

Stellar Observations!

Eyepiece Projection Photos & PBS NOVA

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

Here's what you can see and record with a relatively low cost and safe eyepiece projection system - pics taken April 21st 2012 by SJAA member Malika. Contained in these sunspot groups and the surround the sunspot number was well over 100.

Click Image to Enlarge

 Click Image to Enlarge

Want to learn more about the Sun's awesome features? Check out the recent PBS National Geographic NOVA episode:

 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/secrets-sun.html

Friday and Saturday SJAA Astronomy Day

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

 

We held Astronomy Day Part 1 at Houge Park Friday night and wow what a great time. Sky was good, scopes were plenty and crowd was the largest I've seen. A crescent moon allowed for great views of the giant fault system Rima Hyginus which is connected by a groove to the rille Ariadaeus. The moon did not disappoint deep sky viewers. Many Messier objects were up, M44 and Leo, Virgo galaxy clusters were high in the sky. Of course planetary viewers got good looks at Saturn, Mars, and Venus. Venus is about at its brightest right now as it is both close to Earth with decent phase. And Mars just recently went through its retrograde.

Saturday was Part 2 - Solar Viewing at the New Public Library on the San Jose University Campus. A steady stream of people over the course of the day amounted to innumerable exclamations of "Wow, Amazing, Sick, and You Got To Check This Out..." H-alpha flares were all around the solar disk and I couldn't tell you which ones we like most. At 9 O'clock on the solar disc were two massive prominences that resembled two gargoyles or Lions facing each other - elaborate bookends indeed! At 12 O'clock there were 3 prominent flares - one looked like a giant bonfire in a fireplace and next to it was a detached prominence that looked like a flame from a Bic lighter. Inside the solar disk there was a terrific number of sunspots and filaments (dark sinuous features that are prominences projected on solar surface). The sunspot count was likely in the 80's with about 6 sunspot groups.

Below Malika with two Solar projection systems. 

 Recently she took a nice image of a 100+ sunspot day which we'll post. 

 

Later in the day Kevin came with his sunspot KILLER 10" filtered scope!

End Note :  Great Astronomy Weekend!!

Side Note:  Not having visited the The San Jose Campus for a long time I was blown away by the fantastic diversity and new library - a beautiful place. Check out a book and check the place out. 

Log your own Sunspot Number Part 2 of 2

Plus a graph showing Solar Max expected in early 2013

Like observing the planets in our solar system, observing the sun on a daily or weekly basis gives one an intimate knowledge on its workings and beauty. I have enjoyed watching the storm clouds on Jupiter and the Great Red Spot change over time. But watching the sunspots on the surface of our sun and their effect on space weather throughout our solar system is quite cool, dare I say scorching!!! Especially as we approach solar maximum.

By regularly counting sunspots you can determine for yourself if solar activity is increasing or decreasing and might even catch a solar flare. In Part 1 I introduced the formula for calculating your own sunspot number:

R  =  k (10g+s)

R is the sunspot number; g is the number of sunspot groups on the solar disk; s is the total number of individual spots in all the groups; and k is a variable scaling factor that accounts for observing conditions and the type of telescope used. 

   

You don't need to know your personal scaling factor "k" to log your own sunspot number. Just set it equal to 1. However if you want your sunspot number to tally with the world average you do. Here's a formula to do that:

k = Rp/ISN

Where k is your personal scaling factor, Rp is your sunspot count (Rp = 10g+s) and ISN is International Sunspot Number as calculated by the The Solar Influences Data Analysis Center (SIDC). 

At the end of everyday SIDC publishes a Provisional ISN that you can use as the ISN. It is within 5% of final value so you don't have to wait until the end of the calendar month to get the Definitive ISN. You can get the daily Provisional ISN here along with an Estimated ISN for the upcoming day (and use estimated if provisional is not reported). This data can be e-mailed to you once a day by signing up here.

SIDC has calculated the average sunspot number for past months and came up with this nice graph showing is change over several years with a prediction of when the next solar maximum will be (early 2013).

Click for Full Size

Don't wait for the solar max to start observing. As you can see by this graph there are months, let alone individual days, that the sunspot number can "flare" into the 100's. In fact flares don't depend on a lot a sunspots to happen - one big sunspot group is enough.

SJAA Solar Observing Program for Sunday April 1st

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

Our new Solar Program is seeing a great mix of new astronomers, solar observing regulars and families walking by to see "what's-up":

Click image to enlarge

 

Our beautiful star Sol is what's up! Last month we had a terrific sunspot count of 70 and one decent sized prominence. Today we had a sunspot count of around 50 with huge prominences positioned at 3, 5 and 8 o'clock around the solar disk. 3 o'clock was a spectacular double loop prominence where magnetic field lines loop plasma right back to the Sun's surface. It roughly had the shape of a weeping willow tree. At 9 o'clock we had an emission that looked like a sloop, a sailboat with a head and main sail... Or it looked like a giant nose in profile depending on who you talk too. At 5 o'clock we had  5 prominences all larger than the size of the Earth by several times. Also a classic Earth sized sunspot with a well defined penumbra was seen in the same field of view.

Click image to enlarge

   (A)                                     (B)

Prominences (A) are small plasma flares. The ones we saw today were 2-3 times the size of Earth. Sunspots (B) appear dark because they are cooler relative to their surround. They usually come in pairs (two together) and are typically twice the size of Earth. The one we saw today at 5'oclock was isolated and about 1.5x bigger than Earth.

Now running side-by-side with Solar Observing is SJAA's new Scope Tune-up Program (thanks to people like Dave Ittner). Got a scope you need help with? Bring it on by! And binoculars like the ones below can be fitted with solar filters to safely view the sun.

 Club member Muzz checks out some giant Binoculars with Rob.

Log your own Sunspot Number (Part 2 of 2) will be posted in a couple of days. Check out the March Solar Program blog for Part 1.

SJAA Solar Observing Program for Sunday March 4th

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

One of the largest sunspot groups seen in a long while was visible on the Sun today. Below is an image of it coming into view a day earlier - just fantastic for all scopes equipped with a standard solar filter. In solar filtered binoculars it might of looked like two groups but small solar scopes at moderately high power showed tiny sunspots connecting the two larger dark regions. This Sunspot is associated with a large solar flare expected to hit Earth's Magnetosphere around Friday March 9th.

In all, 5 Sunspot Groups were seen with over 30 individual spots! Let Solar Observing begin folks! Several of these groups were easily seen in an eyepiece projection system:

  Eyepiece Projection System (Thanks Malika)

 Hydrogen Alpha Views in the club's New H-Alpha scope showed the usual spiked prominences all around the Sun's limb with one Earth-sized plasma ejection at 4 O'clock in scopes field of view.

Solar Observers and SJAA 100m H-Alpha Scope

Log you own Sunspot Number (Part 1 of 2)

Scientists track solar cycles by counting sunspots - cool planet-sized areas on the Sun where intense magnetic loops poke through the star's visible surface.

Counting sunspots is not as straightforward as it sounds. Suppose you looked at the Sun through a pair of (properly filtered) low power binoculars - you might be able to see two or three large spots. An observer peering through a high-powered telescope might see 10 or 20. A powerful space-based observatory could see even more - say, 50 to 100. Which is the correct sunspot number?

There are two official sunspot numbers in common use. The first, the daily "Boulder Sunspot Number," is computed by the NOAA SpaceEnvironment Center using a formula devised by Rudolph Wolf in 1848: 

 

R  =  k (10g+s),

where R is the sunspot number; g is the number of sunspot groups on the solar disk; s is the total number of individual spots in all the groups; and k is a variable scaling factor (usually <1) that accounts for observing conditions and the type of telescope (binoculars, space telescopes, etc.). Scientists combine data from lots of observatories -- each with its own k factor -- to arrive at a daily value. 

For example, looking through Ed's refractor during this months program I saw 5 groups and about 30 individual sunpots. This give a sunspot number of:

R = k (10 x 5 + 30) = 80 if k = 1
 

The NOAA Solar Spot Number for March 4 was 70. I got the number of groups right but spots that I thought were individual were likely resolved in a larger aperture scope to be connected ie one and the same.

The other official sunspot number in common use is called Wolf number. It's also known as the International sunspot number, relative sunspot number, or Zürich number. We'll explore this numbering scheme and the k value in Part 2 but if you want to do some researching on you own check out this pdf.

Clear Solar Skies!

New Solar Observing Program

As mentioned in the blog post looking back at 2011, the Board of the San Jose Astronomical Association, after long and thoughtful discussion, decided to move forward with the idea of initiating the SJAA Solar Observing Program.

The cornerstone of this program is the club's acquisition of a telescope that is suitable for viewing the sun in a rich and meaningful way, as well as a mount that is up to the task of handling public events.  We recently took delivery of a Lunt Visual Package and conducted the first solar observing session yesterday, 5 Feb 2012 on the grounds of San Jose's Houge Park.

Our newest board member, Michael Packer, is running the solar program.  His plan is to have a solar day at Houge Park on the first Sunday of every month.  The exact dates of the solar program will be made available once they are assembled, so please keep an eye out for the schedule on the SJAA's website.

Here is Michael's report from the first solar day:

The 1st Solar Program was a success especially for those who stayed through Superbowl kick-off time, when the clouds opened up.  About 20 people strolled by and many stayed the distance. In addition to SJAA's new H-alpha solar scope, we had solar-filter-equipped scopes and binoculars set up to safely view the sun along with a beautiful eyepiece projection system.

Before 3:30pm we were able to observe, through the cloud layer, 3 Sunspot groups (1 complex) plus several faculae. 3:30 onwards we could bump the magnification up to 100x and see prominences all around the sun with the largest on the opposite side to the sunspot region. The 100mm aperture views of these emissions in H-alpha was just spectacular.

SJAA Solar Programs will now be held on the 1st Sunday of every month 2:00-4:00 PM. The next program is March 4th. As with this 1st program, we will hand out material on how to observe, sketch and record sunspot activity. You can also visit The Astronomical League webpage at www.astroleague.org/al/obsclubs/sunspot/sunsptcl.html

Virtually all commercial scopes can be equipped with a solar filter to safely view the Sun as it approaches Solar Maximum over the next several years. Drop by our program to see for yourself. You don't need a H-alpha scope to follow this progression. However H-alpha observing allows one too see the solar flares and plasma eruptions that in size, dwarf the Earth. And SJAA now has a H-alpha scope for all of us to see these events! 

Congratulations to the membership of the SJAA, as well as the public in general, for the addition of this valuable new program!