The image on the left is a 5 panel solar mosaic in Calcium K taken today with my Equinox 120ED scope and a Lunt B1200 CaK module. The image on the right is a magnetogram from NASA’s SDO satellite in orbit around the Sun.
The CaK image shows intense magnetic fields in the chromosphere, so does SDO, but it can determine the polarity of magnetic fields as either N/S. The NASA image shows nicely how sunspot groups are always bipolar even though there may be just one dominant sunspot visible as was the case today with AR 2386-
AR 2386 was the only discrete group clearly visible today, there was one smaller scattered group (out of shot to the left) and another just disappearing on the limb (far right here) but AR 2386 was well placed for imaging.
AR 2386 is classified as Hsx
H – A visually unipolar sunspot group with penumbra.
s – small, symmetric. Largest spot has mature, dark, filamentary penumbra of circular or elliptical shape with little irregularity to the border. The north-south diameter across the penumbra is less or equal than 2.5 degrees.
x – undefined for unipolar groups.
Using a x3 Barlow, I got a nice image of the main sunspot with a light bridge, penumbral filaments, surrounding pores and a good background full of granulations.
I’m always bothered by dust spots on my images so I cleaned my Skyris CCD sensor and 3 xBarlow lens with a hand blower and then an Arctic Butterfly static brush which seemed to work very well with minimal dust on my zoomed in image.
Equinox 120ED scope, Hinode guider, Skyris 274m CCD camera, Ioptron ZEQ25GT mount with either:
1. Lunt B1200 CaK module and Baader K-line filter
2. Baader Herschel wedge and Baader UV/IR cut filter
Astrobase North West 