Our active Sun! July 2024

Sydney City Skywatchers member Garry Dalrymple has been observing sunspot activity lately with a small aperture telescope fitted with a full-aperture solar filter. The Bureau of Meteorology has produced a solar activity chart illustrating solar activity from 18 June to 17 July and forecast for 18 July. There are no guarantees but the next few days could be interesting.

Members are invited to make their own observations, drawings or photos. A large telescope is not necessary to observe sunspots, provided it is done safely.

Never look at the sun directly. Andrew Wood has written an excellent blog post about solar observing safety, here is the link. Any filter on a telescope, camera or binoculars must be to the required safety standard. Here is a link to more advice from the Astronomical Society of Australia on how to safely observe the sun during the partial phases of a solar eclipse which has pertinent information for all solar viewing.

The image below was taken by Toner Stevenson at 12:31 on Friday 19 July with a 600mm lens with a white-light solar filter on a Canon EOS80D Camera, ISO 400 F7.1, 1/2500 exposure.

The image below is from the National Solar Observatory in Learmonth, Western Australia showing many sunspot groups at 8:34 (WA time) on Thursday 18 July.

Here are links to two previous posts about solar activity which we hope will inspire you.

• Monty Leventhal's past post showing how to draw solar activity. Monty projects the solar image onto a page.

• Andrew Wood's post featuring an image using a Baader filter on a camera.