Old Solar Images

I've been itching to do some astronomy and astrophotography lately.  My health hasn't been cooperating with me being able to do much of anything so there hasn't been any astronomy happening around here.  It doesn't mean it hasn't been on my mind though and I really do wish I could find the energy to do a bit of astronomy and astrophotography among many other things I enjoy.

I'm also in the process of slowly rebuilding a couple of telescope mounts I designed and built. This little rebuilding project included some annual maintenance on my permanent telescope pier in the yard.  Little by little, I'm getting those little things accomplished.  

In the meantime, I revisited some photos I shot in July of 2018... 

Typically, I would stack a number of images in an effort to bring out as much detail as possible but these two images are single images.  Somehow, I managed to capture some decent detail anyway without stacking multiple images of detail.  

The texture seen on the surface of the sun in these images is granulation.  This granulation is plasma bubbling to the surface of the photosphere in convection currents.  The sun is a giant bubbling mass of these granule convection cells.

Near the top of each image...  and it has been so long since I shot these images that I can't remember if the orientation of the sun is correct in these images...  but, near the top of each image you can see some lighter areas.  These are solar features called faculae which are bright spots containing magnetic activity that often accompany sunspots or turn into sunspots.  When the sun is very active (we are in the inactive period right now) there are many faculae areas covering the surface of the sun actually making the sun ever so slightly brighter.  

Anyway, I found these two solar images from 2018 to be a bit interesting so I thought I would share them here.