Jan 1st Massive Flare

[GeorgeIonas]

Hi All,

It is a beautiful day for the beginning of the year here in New Zealand. After imaging earlier in the morning I decided to setup my grab-and-go scope ready for our summer holiday in 5 days time. Well, knock me down with a feather, there was a massive solar flare occurring. I panicked a bit to try to set up and capture the event as it was occurring extremely quickly as it was all over within minutes. It was a massive flare ejecting a large filament, have a look at the images. These three frame are about 6 minutes apart, the times of the capture are in the file name.

Used Tak FS-60C +1.7x module (FL=600mm) + SM40 + BF30 + DMK51, each image is a 2 frame mosaic.

George

[mr40mm]

Lovely capture and processing!

[solar]

Great capture George.
I missed out two days in a row.

[GeorgeIonas]

Thank you Randy, I hurried the series of shots not to miss anything but found that I was not exactly on band. I have never seen such a large flare and fast moving filament.

George

[GeorgeIonas]

Ralph, I had just taken off the scope with the SM90 Etalon from the mount and transferred the FS-60C with the SM40 in it's place. My eye just about popped out of my head when I saw the flare and filament, it just caught me off guard.

George

[MapleRidge]

That's an impressive catch George...your timing was most opportune for such a fast acting event.

Very well done : : :

Brian

[mattwastell]

Awesome George - top stuff!

[Cschur]

Excellent capture George. That dark arch is amazing!

Chris

[RichardJ]

Excellent images George.

RichardJ

[solar]

Ralph, I had just taken off the scope with the SM90 Etalon from the mount and transferred the FS-60C with the SM40 in it's place. My eye just about popped out of my head when I saw the flare and filament, it just caught me off guard.

GeorgeThat how it happens George.
When that happens to me I take a few seconds to think it through and decide what I will do and then stick with it
As it turned out this morning I would have got all the flare if I had of gone there first. No matter I am happy with the proms.
I have an hour of the flare from about a third of the way in,it is in AS2 now. Will post one set soon but the animation might take a day or two.

[pstew]

Great catch George

[GeorgeIonas]

Thank you all for your comments.

Ralph: This was the first time that this has happened to me, seeing the filament appear, expand and then dissipate within a few minutes was a rare event at least for me. I also had an interrupted morning with visitors arriving and going. It was a split decision on what to do. It was a pity that I took off the SM90 Etalon and place the FS-60C fitted with the SM40 Etalon. I spent most of the morning before the flare trying different setting to improve my prominence capture technique, I still have to process these images.

George

[solar]

Ralph, I had just taken off the scope with the SM90 Etalon from the mount and transferred the FS-60C with the SM40 in it's place. My eye just about popped out of my head when I saw the flare and filament, it just caught me off guard.

George
Yeah when you least expect it. You did well.

[Allcart]

Well done for capturing this event George. I only got to see it on GONG, but it was a good spectacle. There was an almost simultaneous eruption on the limb which almost blew the tree prom apart..

[GeorgeIonas]

Allcart: I was able to capture the prominences as well in my imaging session. I suppose I was just lucky to be image the sun at the time. What really amazed me was the speed of the the filament expanding, usually large filaments hang around for a few days to a week or so.

George

[swisswalter]

Hi George

congratulations on the catch. Well done

[Derek Klepp]

Nice George check my post I caught the tail end at greater mag but had problems with the contrast.These events get the adrenalin pumping.

[marktownley]

This is stunning!

[Montana]

Tremendous captures well done, you are very lucky indeed :

Alexandra