18 May 2008

Observing Location	PSC
Observational Period	0900-0930 EDT
Atmospheric Conditions	Cloud Cover Scattered Clouds Temperature 58° F Wind Calm Humidity Moderate Barometric Pressure 29.50" Hg Falling Feels Like Warm When I checked the weather this morning they were saying clouds would increase and that there was a 90% probability of precipitation this afternoon but the patch of sky I could see from my bed was blue so I decided to go out early and make a sunspot count before conditions went south. There were a couple of small cirrus clouds around when I got to PSC. By the time I was set up and had the Sun in the eyepiece – that went a lot quicker today than usual – there was a constantly moving, thin veil of cloud over the Sun. By the time I was packed up cloud cover had increased to broken, light cirrus. As well as the constantly changing texture of the Sun’s disk due to the moving clouds there was very light boiling on the limb. Today is another day when it feels warmer than the forecast indicates. Transparency Good Seeing I
Instruments	SAR: Coulter CT-100 Newtonian reflector - Charlie CelEDTron Omni 20mm (21x) CelEDTron Omni 2x Barlow - w/Baader AstroSolar filter film - Charlie
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway

Target Sunspots Constellation Tau Category Solar Time yyyymmdd.hhmm 20080519.0900 EDT Comments Distance Light Time 1.01 AU 8m 25s Angular Size 31' 40.2" Altitude 36.7° Heliographic Latitude (B0) -2.22° Heliographic Longitude (L0) 294.34° Parallactic Angle (P) -19.86° Carrington rotation number (CR) 2070 On Friday Space Weather was indicating three tiny groups, two in one hemisphere and one in the other, that had just appeared and did not have numbers as yet. It was cloudy and rainy yesterday and I didn’t think to follow up on them so don’t know if they have disappeared or have grown, but I didn’t see them even with the increased magnification. The moving clouds between my telescope and the Sun weren't helping me any.   Groups Spots R North 0 0 0 South 0 0 0 Total 0 0 0 R = (Groups * 10) + Spots)