My Notes for the AL Sunspotter Observing Program
I elected to pursue this program using the using the imaging option. All photographs were taken from my home in Verona, Wisconsin (42.96811° N, 89.52387° W) using a ZWO Seestar 50 telescope. The scope is a 50 mm triplet at f/4.9, and its imaging chip records at a resolution of 1920 x 1080. The scope features a solar filter with a bandpass of 580-630nm.
The photos were taken from 10 second video recordings of the sun which were then analyzed and or stacked using ASI Videostack software in the ASI Studio package. The photos have been lightly edited using only the Preview software that comes with the Apple Mac. I found that tweaking the contrast, sharpness, saturation and so forth brought out more details of the sunspots. Making slight changes to these elements of the photos changed resulted in the varied colors of the photos.
This program requires the twenty photos for Part A to be taken within two Carrington Rotations of the Sun. Here are the dates of the 2024 Carrington Rotations:
Fortunately, I was able to take twenty-six photos (from January 20, 2024 to March 10, 2024) during the first two rotations of 2024 (2280 and 2281).
Twenty Photos for Part A: To get a handle on the numbering of the sunspot regions and their classifications I relied on resources found at the Space Weather Live website. Note that I calculated the Wolf numbers and the sunspot area numbers based on an examination of my photos. The photos from the imaging chip in my camera’s do not record what the professional gear used by NASA and other observatories do. Nor were the conditions and seeing at my home identical to distant professional observatories.
The photos for Part A are laid out as follows: Date and time of photo, unannotated image, image annotated with sunspot region numbers, classification of each sunspot region (listed numerically lowest to highest), Wolf calculation, and any relevant comments about the photo. Note that North is not at the very top of a photo, but rather is at about 2 o’clock on an imaginary clock face. East is 90 degrees to the left of north.
Five Photos for Part B:
I identified five of the best photos of the various sunspot areas, cropped them, and annotated them seeking to identify the umbra, penumbra, faculae, light bridges, and so forth.