Astronomy Class - AM

Students from this spring's second session of three-week intensive astronomy course visited Stephens Memorial Observatory this morning to take a look at our Sun. This class was luckier than the previous course's students for we were blessed with mostly-clear skies, reasonably steady seeing, and a sunspot (#1072). Using the big Cooley Telescope and a modern white light solar filter over the objective, we looked at the solar disk as a whole with the low-magnification eyepiece and could see traces of, I suspect, "supergranules" and the lonely sunspot floating in the lower left-hand portion of our field of view. At about 122X granulation wasn't apparent but good detail could be observed in the sunspot! When seeing was best we could easily make out the shape of the umbra (dark central portion of the spot) and the filaments of the penumbra. Interestingly it seemed almost as if the entire assembly was encircled by a solid line cleanly separating the spot from the rest of the solar atmosphere. There have been very few sunspots to observe and (seemingly) fewer clear days during which to observe them so the morning session was a real treat. The visit lasted from about 9:00 to 10:00 when the students returned to their classroom... for mid-term exams! If they survive their tests and the sky is clear, we plan to have a nighttime visit from the astronomy class with the Moon and Saturn as featured attractions.

Image credit: SOHO/MDI - image "flipped" side-to-side to illustrate telescope view.