Starship Asterisk*

Plane, Clouds, Moon, Spots, Sun

Explanation: What's that in front of the Sun? The closest object is an airplane, visible just below the Sun's center and caught purely by chance. Next out are numerous clouds in Earth's atmosphere, creating a series of darkened horizontal streaks. Farther out is Earth's Moon, seen as the large dark circular bite on the upper right. Just above the airplane and just below the Sun's surface are sunspots. The main sunspot group captured here, AR 2192, is one of the largest ever recorded and has been crackling and bursting with flares since it came around the edge of the Sun early last week. Taken last Thursday, this show of solar silhouettes was unfortunately short-lived. Within a few seconds the plane flew away. Within a few minutes the clouds drifted off. Within a few hours the partial solar eclipse of the Sun by the Moon was over. Only the sunspot group remains, but within a few more days even AR 2192 will disappear around the edge of the Sun. Fortunately, when it comes to the Sun, even unexpected alignments are surprisingly frequent.

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Plane, Clouds Moon, Spots, sun. Why that's a smorgasbord of astrologicalisity!

Doyle Slifer - One of the neatest image I've seen of the partial solar eclipse last week, kudos to you!

Beyond wrote:Plane, Clouds Moon, Spots, sun. Why that's a smorgasbord of astrologicalisity!

There is however a lack of a planetary nebula.
This post is also dedicated to Judy Schmidt.

starsurfer wrote:

Beyond wrote:Plane, Clouds Moon, Spots, sun. Why that's a smorgasbord of astrologicalisity!

There is however a lack of a planetary nebula.
This post is also dedicated to Judy Schmidt.

Not planetary nebula, but there almost could have been a planet. I was hoping the fuzzy dot to the left could have been mercury. That would have made it that more awesome.

Does anyone have records and could determine if a sunspot almost as big as AR 2192 occurred sometime between Sept 1973 and May 1975 ??? I distinctly remember being outside one very misty morning in Junior High school for gym class, and you could look at the sun directly because of the mist, and I know I saw a sunspot. After looking at AR 2192 the other day thru xray film, it seems roughly the same size as my remote gym class discovery.

mtbdudex - Thanks! It was a lucky shot, but what a dream come true. Funny. I saw your most active topic and I have a similar story. My wife totally encouraged me to grab my scope (even though my club had several already out there), she helped me with the iPhone getting it to stay in focus and then, she practically twisted my arm off to get me to submit it to APOD. She's embarrassed and doesn't want me to give her too much credit (publicly ), but I seriously doubt she reads these forums (plus, I don't care - she's awesome!).

tomatoherd wrote:Does anyone have records and could determine if a sunspot almost as big as AR 2192 occurred sometime between Sept 1973 and May 1975 ??? I distinctly remember being outside one very misty morning in Junior High school for gym class, and you could look at the sun directly because of the mist, and I know I saw a sunspot. After looking at AR 2192 the other day thru xray film, it seems roughly the same size as my remote gym class discovery.

It's very likely that the records exist somewhere but it might also be very challenging to find it. Solar observation is an ancient astronomical pastime.

Thanks, Geck.
And I found some candidates: Under "solar cycle 20" in wikidepia, the top right photo, "solar magnetogram from solar cycle 20 (1974)" has a verge large sunspot in blue, the top left-most, and looks every bit as big or bigger than AR 2192. Unless of course, these magnetograms are not using visible light, and so it's apples & oranges.
And the lower photo shows 'one of the largest solar flares ever recorded' in Dec. 1973. Maybe several days before that photo we'd have seen a large sunspot there....

There is a file of daily sunspot numbers (a visual average with groups counting more) here. From 1973-1975, the highest peak (comparable to recent numbers) is at 1973.68, followed pretty closely by 1974.77 and 1975.59. The middle one fits your date range (would be about May 17, 1974).

NGC3314 wrote:1973.68, followed pretty closely by 1974.77 and 1975.59

I love this fractional method of dates.

Ack! Metric dates!

Rob

geckzilla wrote:

NGC3314 wrote:1973.68, followed pretty closely by 1974.77 and 1975.59

I love this fractional method of dates.

Like the Julian day, but counting by years rather than days. That's a nice baseline for sunspot records.

rstevenson wrote:Ack! Metric dates!

I didn't larn me no decimals in my Murican school. When whar dem sunspots in fortnights?

tomatoherd wrote:After looking at AR 2192 the other day thru xray film

Please get eclipse glasses; you can get them online. Or view safely using a projection method.