BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Binastro" data-source="post: 3183576" data-attributes="member: 111403">1310 UTC today. Beautiful day but with extensive Cirrus cloud. 14°C.With the free Sky at Night magazine Eclipse glasses, which are approximately shade 14, I saw reasonably easily, and using my distance glasses behind the eclipse glasses, a sunspot left of centre disc. Today these glasses were somewhat dark, compared with the optimum for resolution of sunspots. However, for the partial eclipse of the Sun these will be very good indeed. The Sun looks orange.With a free astronomical Society flat eclipse shade, containing perhaps black polymer?, The sunspot was difficult to see. This shade is very dark about shade 15, possibly even shade 15.2 or thereabouts. The Sun looks a dim orange in this shade.With the welders glass 13, large size, the sunspot was easily seen as a dark black spot.I estimated the penumbral size as 50 arc seconds.In fact, with a small properly protected instrument, this sunspot has now become quite large. It composes of a large black sunspot, with two equally large, small to medium sunspots to its right. With protected unaided eyes this sunspot group is seen as one sunspot.I think that projection using binoculars will pretty easily show this sunspot today.At 0924 UTC this morning, using the H Alpha telescope, this sunspot look smaller but was in the middle of of a bright white swirling area. I think that there was a flare taking place at this time, which possibly may give rise to Northern lights in perhaps two days time. Although one has to look at predictions or just look at the sky in a dark place.</blockquote>

Verification