Solar observations: October 2019

Sunspot activity on the Sun is now proving to be very rare as the Solar Cycle 24 is now at minimum. Not one Sunspot was observed by me for the whole of the month. The only activity seen on the face of the Sun was a very small faint Filament seen on the first of October about 60° east and 10° south.

Prominences were a little more active though most were very faint due to the magnetic fields being so weak.

An active Prominence was observed on the 2nd on the NW limb and by the following day had reached a height of 47,000 km.

No activity at all could be seen on the 6th.

The next significant Prominence was observed on the 11th when a double column Prominence was seen on the NE limb reaching a height of approximately 65,000 km.

On the 12th the Sun was once again clear of all activity.

On the 13th an active single arched Prominence was seen on the NE limb and by the 14th it reached a height of about 56,000 km. You can see this in Monty's diagram above.

Due to cloud cover no observation was made until the 16th when a mound type active Prominence was observed on the SE limb. Though this was quite faint a bright Surge appeared within it and lasted about 20 minutes. The following day the same Prominence was still visible but on the NW limb another large mound type Prominence reached a height of about 65,000 km.

For the rest of the month all activity remained extremely low

The Sun was clear of all activity on the 6th 12th 18th 20th 22nd & 23rd .

Due to bad weather no observations were made on the 4th 5th 7th 8th 10th 15th & 29th .

For the month of October a total of 24 observations were made with the remaining 7 days either cloud covered or rain.

On other areas a coronal hole was observed on 22 October. This is where the Sun's corona is cooler, therefore it appears darker, and has lower energy and gas levels. They constantly change. SpaceweatherLive imaged and tweeted about this, but there were no reports of seeing this from Sydney.

The total average classification value was 0.0 and the relevant total Sunspot number was 0.

Monty Leventhal OAM