Astrophotos: An Amazing Rush from the Sun

“The Sun was amazing yesterday!” wrote John Chumack, one of our favorite astrophotographers, sending us these great shots of incredible prominences on the western limb, and one detached solar prominence, along with several filaments on the disk and 3 Sunspots!

You might get a “rush” from the close-ups of the large prominences blasting from the Sun. John shot these with a hydrogen alpha filter from his backyard in Dayton, Ohio. See more below:

Full disk of the Sun in Hydrogen Alpha Light on 02-07-2013. Credit and copyright: John Chumack.
Full disk of the Sun in Hydrogen Alpha Light on 02-07-2013. Credit and copyright: John Chumack.

John’s tools of the trade for these images were a Lunt 60mm/50F H-Alpha Solar telescope, DMK 21 AF04, 2x barlow, for close-up, 1/54 Sec exposure, 724 frames; a DMK 31 Camera for Full Disk, 1/387 second exposure, 561 Frames, Stacked in Registax 6.

Prominences from the Sun on 02-07-2013, with one detached prominence achieving liftoff! Credit and copyright: John Chumack.
Prominences from the Sun on 02-07-2013, with one detached prominence achieving liftoff!. Credit and copyright: John Chumack.

These Sun has been fairly active the past few days. Here’s a video from the Solar Dynamics Observatory of a C9-class solar flare. produced from Active Region AR1667 on February 6, 2013:

And John wasn’t the only one imaging the active Sun in the last few days. Here’s another photo of the Sun captured by Paul Stewart in New Zealand.

The Sun by Paul Stewart
The Sun by Paul Stewart

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