The filament returns!
Beginning yesterday, activity along the
trailing limb increased. I saw as many as seven active areas around
the limb, five of them along the trailing limb. Only one area seemed to
warrant special attention yesterday, but another day's rotation and
steadier air this morning revealed this complex group of advancing
fountains. The show continued on beyond the faint "chiffon" formation
with an isolated spike and beyond that a high faint arch without
visible connection to the solar surface. By the calendar, there
seems every reason to think this is the same structure I watched
cross the solar disk and start to disappear around the leading limb a
couple of weeks ago
. I enjoyed today's best views through a 12mm Nagler rather than the
usual 16mm. The slightly higher magnification (160x vs 120x) helped some,
but scattered light seemed greatly lessened which helped much
more. [1996 Sep 15 11:00-11:30 EDT]
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The near sky...
During this session, I looked away from the eyepiece to see a text-book
raft of very high mare's tail cirrus clouds sweep very rapdily down from
the NW. A bright white parhelic arc formed in these clouds, rounding at
least 140 degrees of the sky. Closer to the sun a colorful
circumzenithal arc formed. A bright sundog completed the show. All
this was at its best for ten minutes, max. I photographed these haloes
and glories on Fuji Velvia and will post images when I have them in hand.
Take me home!