Stella Nostra

Today I'd like to share with you a picture of the Sun that I took last week using the imager at the Vis while testing out one of our new solar filters that we got for the upcoming transit of Venus in June (which you will hear much, much more about as we get closer to it).

Our Star.

There's not too much detail to see, but you can make out a sunspot (probably about the size of Earth) in the upper-middle. When I came back to work this week, the Sun had a humongous sunspot complex on it that was probably about the size of Jupiter, which just goes to show how fast it can change. In fact, I would bet that it was that sunspot group that was responsible for the massive solar flare that hit Earth this morning. I'll try to get a picture of it if I can, but it's been very cloudy up here the last few days. It has a suspicious tendency to cloud over whenever I grab my camera...

If you're wondering about the title, that's simply Latin for "Our Star".