Daily Archives: March 4, 2014

The Sun Online and solar activity. March 04, 2014

There are currently 8 sunspot regions on the visible solar disk, with small delta’s observed in NOAA 1990 and in the trailing portion of NOAA 1991. The strongest event of the past 24 hours was an impulsive M1-flare peaking at 15:58UT in NOAA 1989, after which this sunspot group decayed significantly.
Most of the C-class flaring occurred in active region NOAA 1986 which has now fully rotated behind the northwest limb. The CMEs associated with these flares were not Earth-directed. Active flaring conditions are expected, with an M-class flare most likely from active regions NOAA 1990 and 1991. Solar wind speed has been varying between 350-360 km/s, and Bz between -5nT and +6nT. A coronal hole on the northern hemisphere is approaching the central meridian and might produce active geomagnetic conditions from late 7 March onwards. Geomagnetic conditions have been quiet and are expected to remain so.
SIDC

Equipment: Coronado 90 + Imaging Source DMK + LX75
Processing: Photoshop, Avistack 300 frames
Date: 03/04/14
Time UT: 18:00
Exposure 1/500 sec.

With SPONLI Space is getting closer

Sun and Prominence

Image Credit & Copyright: jp-BrahicExplanation: Dramatic prominences can sometimes be seen looming just beyond the edge of the sun. Such was the case last week as a large prominence, visible above, highlighted a highly active recent Sun. A waving sea of hot gas is visible in the foreground chromosphere in great detail as it was imaged in one specific color of light emitted by hydrogen. A solar prominence is a cloud of solar gas held just above the surface by the Sun’s magnetic field. The Earth, illustrated in the inset, is smaller than the prominence. Although very hot, prominences typically appear dark when viewed against the Sun, since they are slightly cooler than the photosphere below them. A quiescent prominence typically lasts about a month, and may erupt in a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) expelling hot gas into the Solar System, some of which may strike the Earth and trigger auroras.

NASA APOD 04-Mar-2014

Magellanic Clouds

The two Magellanic Clouds (or Nubeculae Magellani) are irregular dwarf galaxies visible from the southern hemisphere, which are members of ourLocal Group and may be orbiting our Milky Way galaxy. Because they both show signs of a bar structure, they are often reclassified as Magellanic spiral galaxies.
The Large Magellanic Cloud and its neighbour and relative, the Small Magellanic Cloud, are conspicuous objects in the southern hemisphere, looking like separated pieces of the Milky Way to the naked eye. Roughly 21° apart in the night sky, the true distance between them is roughly 75,000 light-years. Until the discovery of the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy in 1994, they were the closest known galaxies to our own. The LMC lies about 160,000 light years away, while the SMC is around 200,000. The LMC is about twice the diameter of the SMC (14,000 ly and 7,000 ly respectively). For comparison, the Milky Way is about 100,000 ly across.

Imaging telescopes or lenses: Canon EF 35mm f/2.0
Imaging cameras: Canon EOS 450D / Digital Rebel XSi / Kiss X2
Mounts: Vixen Atlux
Filters: Baader IR EOS
Dates: July 31, 2011
Locations: Tivoli / Namibia
Frames: 5×240″ ISO800
Integration: 0.3 hours
Darks: ~5

Autor: Hartmuth Kintzel

04 March 2014

We select the best works of amateur astrophotographers with details of equipment, shooting processing etc.

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts: