Recent Sunspots

Solar activity is diminishing in its 11-year cycle, but there have been a few nice spots recently and I have used them to try out the Society's 6-inch refractor.  There was a nice single spot at the end of May and the AR-6 gave me a nice picture once I tried using a narrow-band filter with it.  Then more recently there has been a nice set of three spots.

Here firstly are whole-Sun pictures taken with a 270-mm SLR lens in white light.

Top:  Sunspot 12546 taken 24 May 2016



Below: Sunspots (left to right) 12567, 12565, and 12566 taken on 17 July 2016












The here are close-up pictures firstly of 12546 taken with the AR-6 refractor and an OIII filter.

And then the group of three taken in white light using my ETX125

Sadly this last is not as good as I would expect.  Maybe seeing conditions were worse than they appeared to be.

Peter