Homunculus Nebula

Perhaps the strangest object in the night sky, the "Homunculus" contains the giant star Eta Carinae. This is a 'rough' sketch made with the 25" Mike Kerr Telescope at ASNSW's dark sky site, Wiruna. This is the raw sketch - though I have erased various notes. Key points of interest are the billows of cumulus-like gas at the right-lobe, and the central 'jet' of the left-node. The latter has a dimmer cloud of ejecta. The right-node showed distinct gaps in places - and an equatorial 'jet' is seen below the star. A second 'jet' was suspected above the star. Magnification was 350. Many thanks to Chris Ross for pointing the huge 'scope at the target, I look forward to a longer session with, maybe, steadier 'seeing'. The visual spectrum of this object clearly showed the hydrogen-alpha and beta lines in emission! I suspect it's the only object to do so with amateur telescopes.

SPSP Challenge: IC2966 - can you see it?

Is IC2966 in fact Dunlop 266, 267?  He described two small hazy spots very near the Index Catalogue (IC) object. He was using a nine inch speculum - perhaps he did! IC2966 is one of the 'missing' Dunlop Objects that scholars do not credit to Dunlop. SPSP attendees might like to tackle the object with eight to ten inch telescopes. Report what you see to me (Harry) - I hope to be there. And the forecast is for clear-ish skies.

Where is IC2966? Its on the Musca/Centaurus border at 11h50m -64deg52min - overhead near the Southern Cross during the South Pacific Star Party. Good luck!
      Happy to report the two faint nebulae were fairly easy with the Mike Kerr 25" F5 telescope - pointed by Chris Ross. A 15m exposure by Joe Cauchi with his 16" reflector shows a pair of stars embedded in a blue reflection nebula - just as Dunlop described. How did he see it in a nine inch speculum: or was it then brighter?

Joe's great shot approximates the view in the 25". It seems the embedded stars are spectral type B or A as they excite no H-alpha emission - just a faint blue reflection nebula. Here's an idea: 180y ago the nebula was denser and scattered more light - but has now 'cleared' and little scattering occurs. Any thoughts?

AR11726 at the Limb

AR11726 was a large spot group of great complexity. When it reached the limb it revealed some fine H-alpha features. Here we see post flare loops after a GOES C5.7 flare at 22:25UT. The site showed no activity at 22:00, when white light viewing began. Returning to H-alpha at 23:03 showed these events. View 1: above the site we see the PFL ~40Mm high. Below are bright surges and some tiny  loops of the C5.7 flare. View2 shows the flare loops still present, now with larger surges - the latter are still strong in View3, while the PFL are fading. View4: crossing the flare loops are parts of a tall surge, in the process of recoiling back into the solar surface. Only the following spot of the active region was seen the time; the rest was concealed behind the limb

Big flare in AR11718

AR11718, a northern hemisphere group, was a simple entity at first. Around April 9, half way across the disc, it had a burst of new spots: a close count showed about 30, many in curved chains. It seemed  two spot groups were intertwined - and the complexity implied fireworks! On the 10th and 11th it was almost too complex to sketch. Here we see it on the 12th when it had an M3.3 flare. The peak was at local sunrise (20:38UT) and I had this view at 20:49UT when the GOES flux had dropped to M1.  It was a great flare - bright and of large area: ~450 area units, roughly the size of the spots themselves. The group stretched across nine degrees of longitude, and at the time lay some 40 degrees from the western limb.      This was one of the few great flares in AR11718. Nearby, AR11719 had an M6.5 on the 11th at 07:16UT, not seen in Sydney.

Dipole Emergence

Sunspots emerge as tiny pores in the sun's surface with small arch filaments connecting the spots of opposite polarity (top). These tiny arches disappear once the emerging spots have developed penumbrae. AR11670 was a good example - these images show the growth of the dipole into a pair of major spots, both with penumbrae - a fairly typical spot group. Most of the proper-motion in the spots is confined to the preceding spot (rhs) - and that motion ceases after the main spots are about 50Mm apart, unless a new dipole emerges within the group. A second dipole will often cause a much more complex spot group to develop.

Graceful eruption

This quiescent prominence lifted off the sun's SW limb on February 20th (UT) .There was plenty of time to sketch it since the ejection velocity was a low 25km/sec : fairly typical for a quiet region filament (QRF). Active region filaments (ARF) under special circumstances can eject at over 3000km/sec - an incredible velocity even given the very low density of the material involved. This filament was formed by plumes or 'streaks' of low-power magnetic fields, the relics of decayed sunspot groups.
   While the sun is abnormally quiet at present, from time to time it still hosts a range of interesting and beautiful transients.

coronal fields

Solar eclipses reveal the faint corona. Here's an overlay of (c) Solarsoft's PFSS model about the time of the Australian 2012 eclipse imaged here by (c) Emmanoulidis and Druckmuller. It's mostly a good fit but some transient shifts of streamers are seen. (Ignore my lines and marks). The PFSS models seem to match reality quite well - and reveal the surface sources that strongly shape our star's coronal fields.