Woke this saturday morning as expected to clear blue skies, and had already decided I was going to spend the day in the garden doing a bit of solar astronomy. Getting my first observation in just after 9am I was really pleased to see the solar limb alive with promises as I looked through my hydrogen alpha scope. On the western limb there was a prominence that just had the appearance that it could possibly lift off from the sun. Well round about 11.30am it started to rapidly pull away from the solar disk. In the space of just over 1/2 an hour the prom had turned into the largest I had seen in some time - I would estimate the prominence lifted off at a speed of some 750000km/hr!!!
I took this shot of it at around 11.54ut, it still had some connection to the sun in the form of a huge loop of plasma...
Huge-Prom--11-03-19-11-53-55 by
Mark Townley, on Flickr
Just 10 minutres after that it had expanded so much I had to 'zoom out' with my scope to get it all in the field of view. The next one was taken at 12.04ut
wide-angle-big-prom-and-disk--11-03-19-12-03-38 by
Mark Townley, on Flickr
Just minutes after this it had expanded and dimmed to the point of no longer being visible. Just shows how dynamic our star actually is! If this had been directed earthward we would be expecting aurora, however it was thrown out 90deg away from us.
Hope you like them!
Mark
