So, I took my telescope out on this fine and clear afternoon to look at the sun. In general, you won’t see many sunspots right now; we’re in the trough of the 11 year solar cycle.

The only filter I had on it was the Aluminized Mylar filter over the aperture. I’m thinking about getting a Hydrogen Alpha filter; it would help view the prominences that are associated with the sunspots. We’ll see. Those filters tend to be expensive. My dad was thinking about getting one; perhaps I’ll see if we could invest in one together.

There really wasn’t much solar activity today; there were two spots in the SE corner of the disc (which actually isn’t the SE corner of the sun, because the image in a Newtonian reflector is always inverted). There was a smaller spot and a larger; the smaller one was located NW of the larger. It’s probable that this was a prominence; one sunspot is indicative of one end of the prominence while the other is the opposite end.

So, despite the lack of activity, it was kewl taking the scope out. I’ll probably do a little bit of observing tonight…so, entry to follow 🙂