December 16 2021 Observations. Counting Sunspots!

[DeepSolar64]

Session time is from 16:30 until 17:36 UTC. Intermittent. The skies are mostly cloudy and the seeing is a bit below average. The temperature is 62F ( 16.6C ). Breezy.


Orion 70mm Solar Telescope. 25x, 50x and 62.5x ( WL )
Today I concentrated on counting spots on the white light solar disc. AR12907,08 and 09 are lined up in the SE quadrant. AR12906 lies at the CLM southwest of those and AR12905 lies NW of AR12906 just below the solar equator. North of AR12905 across the equator lies AR12910. I found it almost impossible to get a constant count. I got 28 at 25x. 40 at 50x and 43 spots at 62.5x. I averaged around 36 spots. I still at best fell 9 spots behind Terry's reported SWL 52 spots.

This is surprisingly hard to do accurately!!

James

SDOHMIc_Greyscale4K_12-16-21.jpg (973.47 KiB) Viewed 402 times

[rigel123]

It's a bunch whatever the number is! Nice report!

[EGRAY_OBSERVATORY]

Thanks James and yes I imagine that counting so many spots would be hard unless one has a large scope for a close up count.

Even with the highest-resolution SDO images, which I usually use, zooming in by cropping or if the pc has the zoom tool, it is still very difficult.

Good effort for the various counts you got, so well done.

Terry

[DeepSolar64]

I also got those NE pores but totally overlooked those pores on the NW limb!! If I could have seen them at all using the Orion70.

[EGRAY_OBSERVATORY]

Of course always weather permitting and here - no chance again.

I certainly want to get one of the scopes or the spotting-scope to an area where the Sun can get through as soon as, but not hopeful when...

Even a chance at viewing or get some snaps of Comet Leonard is simply not yet availabubble...

[DeepSolar64]

Terry,
You are an aircraft fan and can fly. Maybe an airborne solar observatory is in order? It may get you above the clouds! I don’t think an amateur has ever done an airborne observatory before.

James

[Montana]

What a great challenge James and very interesting about the spot counts at different magnifications. It would only be expected that the more mag the more spots. But that gives us food for thought about historic spot counts and how accurate they would be, the variances could be telescope and magnification dependent.

Alexandra

[marktownley]

An hour well spent James, would love to see all this activity we have at the moment...

[DeepSolar64]

What a great challenge James and very interesting about the spot counts at different magnifications. It would only be expected that the more mag the more spots. But that gives us food for thought about historic spot counts and how accurate they would be, the variances could be telescope and magnification dependent.

Alexandra

Seeing could play a role too as it often varies from minute to minute. It’s also hard to tell what’s a spot and what is not. Some spots run together and then there are those multi-umbra spots that share a penumbra. Counting spots in number is surprisingly difficult, or is for me but heck I am up for a challenge!

James

[MAURITS]

Thanks for sharing James.

[DeepSolar64]

You are welcome Maurits. So far I am under clouds today.

[EGRAY_OBSERVATORY]

Exactly as yourself and Alexandra have said, so weather conditions will need to be very calm, as well as scope/magnification too, but as you are in the lead with your counting James, you may well be the winner with the most accurate count (nearly).

Perhaps somebody with good weather (Pedro standards apply) and getting some close-up's of all the AR's to gain a more accurate count and might beat you...

Terry

[DeepSolar64]

I would only have a chance against Pedro if I had good seeing and was using my Celestron 102.