Sun – Eskildoodle Photos and Feelings

Now You See It, Now You Don’t.

A large, perhaps 200,000 mile long, dark filament with a total mass of a billions of tons or more has been visible on the southern hemisphere of the Sun for the past several days (lower right side of the upper image), but it was gone the next day (lower image). Where’d it go? The filamentContinue reading “Now You See It, Now You Don’t.”

8,000

It’s really not much to look at, just a little round ball with a few scattered spots. But looks can be deceiving, this “little” round ball is actually 835,000 miles in diameter and the larger spots are nearly as large as the Earth. However, this image means a lot to me since, if I haveContinue reading “8,000”

Throwin’ Heat

“It looks like a baseball,” my wife commented when I proudly displayed my photo of the Sun. I had to admit that the markings across the solar disk did resemble baseball stitching, and I do remember playing with some very raggedy looking baseballs when I was a kid. It is obviously a fastball, because theContinue reading “Throwin’ Heat”

Now You See It, Now You Don’t

A large “blemish” can be seen on the lower right part of the upper photo, but not on the lower photo taken a day later. Don’t you wish face cream worked like that? Well, maybe not; this “blemish” is over 100,000 miles long, weighs on the order of billions of tons, and was explosively ejectedContinue reading “Now You See It, Now You Don’t”

Active Sun

The Sun may seem like a bright, featureless blazing ball in the sky, but in specially filtered telescopes it shows an other-worldly host of huge features. Spots larger than Earth can be seen next to bright “plages” that reveal the magnetic fields that cause the spots to form. The brightest plages are massive magnetic explosionsContinue reading “Active Sun”

In Less Than a Week

***NERD ALERT!*** On November 30, 2022, it appeared that the Sun would be totally without spots for only the second time this year, since the only active region with spots was rapidly fading from view. The next day, however, two new spots appeared and in the following five days the sunspots went from nearly zeroContinue reading “In Less Than a Week”

Solar Spectacles

I observe the Sun through specially designed solar telescopes on a nearly daily basis. This is the first time that I felt like the Sun was looking back at me. Filaments of hydrogen held aloft by powerful magnetic fields created this illusion of “Sun Glasses.” #sunglasses #sun #glasses #spectacles

Eclipse Epilogue

How amazing that we live in a time when the Sun and Moon appear to be the same size in the sky. In the past the Moon was much closer to Earth and early blocked the whole of the Sun. In the future the Moon will be much farther away and its passage in frontContinue reading “Eclipse Epilogue”

Moon Shadow

Has it really been five years since the speeding shadow of the moon swept across the US to the delight of millions who got to see it? We went to the Evergreen Aviation Museum at McMinnville, Oregon, with family members to observe it and were treated to a true solar system spectacle. The images onContinue reading “Moon Shadow”

Filament, Then Prom, Then Gone

Powerful magnetic fields sometimes levitate billions of tons of material above the surface of the Sun which is known as a filament. When solar rotation moves it to the limb of the Sun, it is called a prominence, or prom for short, and reveals how high it is. The whole prominence/filament is over 100,000 milesContinue reading “Filament, Then Prom, Then Gone”