Following a heads-up from a fellow member of Stargazers lounge I managed 20 minutes with my white-light solar setup this afternoon to capture the first sun-spot of solar cycle 25. Not sure it’s been designated a number yet?
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released the following statement with regards to sunspot cycle 25. “The NOAA/NASA co-chaired international panel to forecast Solar Cycle 25 released a preliminary forecast for Solar Cycle 25 on April 5, 2019. The consensus: Cycle 25 will be similar in size to cycle 24. It is expected that sunspot maximum will occur no earlier than the year 2023 and no later than 2026 with a minimum peak sunspot number of 95 and a maximum of 130. In addition, the panel expects the end of Cycle 24 and start of Cycle 25 to occur no earlier than July, 2019, and no later than September, 2020″
Imaging details are shown after the respective photographs:
| Mount: | Skywatcher SolarQuest |
| Telescope: | WO Megrez 72: f6 430mm focal length |
| Blocking Filter: | Baader CoolCeramic Hershel Wedge Baader Solar Continuum |
| Camera: | ZWO ASI 178MM USB 3.0 Mono Camera |
| Capture rate: | 3096×2080 60fps @ 10bit ADC |
| Stacked: | AviStack2 |
| Frames: | .ser file 300 from 1200 frames |
| Processed: | Photoshop CC |
| Mount: | Skywatcher SolarQuest |
| Telescope: | WO Megrez 72: f15 1,075mm focal length |
| Blocking Filter: | Baader CoolCeramic Hershel Wedge Baader Solar Continuum |
| Camera: | ZWO ASI 178MM USB 3.0 Mono Camera |
| Capture rate: | 3096×2080 60fps @ 10bit ADC |
| Stacked: | AviStack2 |
| Frames: | .ser file 285 from 1200 frames |
| Processed: | Photoshop CC |
I mentioned in yesterdays post of Ha sun (link here) that there was a bright spot on the limb of the sun that may be a sunspot developing, looks like I was right. Here’s a version of one of yesterdays images rotated to match todays image rotation (I rotated the tube of the scope before yesterdays session to allow greater access to the pressure tuner).
