I always get excited when an active sunspot approaches the solar limb.
You just never know what delights it will give you using a Hydrogen Alpha setup.
On the morning of the 18th of September it was very clear, so I set up my scope and plugged in the Quark.
Even before the Quark was anywhere near set at the correct temperature, it was quite clear that there was an extremely bright prominence visible on the limb.
You cannot usually see prominences in this setup, until the Quark is close to reaching its tuned temperature.
So I quickly realised that this might give some really great results.
All came to temperature and the view was incredible.
Undoubtedly, these were the best views I have ever had with my own equipment.
This was Active 2871 before it rounded the solar limb to move into view from Earth.
I took a few images, a couple of which I have posted below.
Just look at that plasma following the lines of the magnetic field around them.
While taking a couple of different exposures to make a mosaic to get all the action in one image, I noticed a surge prom starting to develop.
Here is one of the images I took of it.
As things looked extremely active and moving fairly quickly, the impulse to capture an animation of all this going on was now far too strong.
I took loads of images 2 minutes apart, and managed to capture 30 minutes of action before the clouds to end my fun.
I then spent a good few hours processing each image and putting the animation together.
I have added this below.
Boy, there was so, so much going on here.
