Thursday, March 7, 2013

New Sunspot numbered as 1690

  
   We have two sunspot regions which disappeared yesterday while one new region rotated into view over the north-east limb as a single spot HSX Alpha type group at 20 millionths in size and was numbered as region 1690.

 Region 1689 grew from a BXO Beta group at 10 millionths to a DSO Beta type group at 150 millionths in size.










   No C class solar flares took place yesterday.

Even though there are several groups capable of producing C class flares, only occasional
solar flares are expected.












Region 1689









Region 1690









Thor's Helmet



   
   This helmet-shaped cosmic cloud with wing-like appendages is popularly called Thor's Helmet. Heroically sized even for a Norse god, Thor's Helmet is about 30 light-years across. In fact, the helmet is actually more like an interstellar bubble, blown as a fast wind from the bright, massive star near the bubble's center sweeps through a surrounding molecular cloud. Known as a Wolf-Rayet star, the central star is an extremely hot giant thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova stage of evolution. Cataloged as NGC 2359, the nebula is located about 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Canis Major. The sharp image, made using broadband and narrowband filters, captures striking details of the nebula's filamentary structures. It shows off a blue-green color from strong emission due to oxygen atoms in the glowing gas.

Image Credit & Copyright: Martin Rusterholz (CXIELO Observatory)

2 comments:

  1. Never saw Thor's Helmet before, very cool !!! Thank you !!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Love the deep space picture. Thanks for all of your work!

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for choosing "My Solar Alerts" for your Solar event news.
Check back soon for more updates! :)