Contains:  Solar system body or event
Sunspots AR2975 and AR2976 Rotating Around Leading Solar Limb 4/02/2022, Steve Lantz

Sunspots AR2975 and AR2976 Rotating Around Leading Solar Limb 4/02/2022

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

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On 4/2/2022, I had a chance to image the sun; I was pressed for time so I grabbed my venerable C5 SCT and ran outside.  The winds were a problem, especially because the scope's tripod is a bit wiggly.  I ended up hand-selecting 51 out of 1001 frames (tedious) from the best video (i.e. when the winds were the calmest) to get the final image via stacking.  The color is false as the images were monochrome.  This particular sunspot group is significant because a few days earlier, when the sunspot group was more centrally positioned on the sun, two solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CME) erupted from it and headed towards earth.  En route, they merged into one, producing what is called a cannibal CME that arrived at the earth on March 30 through 31.  The resulting geomagnetic storm produced auroras as far south as Denver.  I didn't get to see the auroral display, but photographs verify its occurrence.  As it turned out, the geomagnetic storm itself was not particularly strong, but it was unusual in that it produced a "wind" of charged particles that flowed southward instead of the typical flow in the opposite direction.  This unusual flow is what brought the auroras to such southernly locations.  Shown here is a screen shot of a video taken by Erin Moe.  Seeing the Northern Lights is on my bucket list and, darn it, my bucket is still left wanting because I missed it!

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As an aside, I've noticed that sunspot umbras near the solar limb often have the appearance of being lower than the surrounding quiet sun.  This is called the Wilson effect.  Measuring whether or not there is an actual depression is complicated; one theory says they are real depressions of up to 1000 km and another says they are illusory and result from greater transparency of the atmosphere above the umbra.  Ya gotta love the things scientists find to study!

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Sunspots AR2975 and AR2976 Rotating Around Leading Solar Limb 4/02/2022, Steve Lantz