I did some winter solstice celebration using my telescope this morning
Observed 0915-1015 EST/1415-1515 UT. Nine active region sunspots reported on the Sun today for the winter solstice at spaceweather.com site. Spaceweather.com reports – “HAPPY SOLSTICE! Today is the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, and the longest day in the south--that is, it's the "December solstice." The exact moment of the solstice is Thursday, Dec. 21st, at 10:27 p.m. EST, when the sun stops moving south and starts moving north again. This event marks the beginning of winter in the north and summer in the south.”
Observing using my 90-mm refractor telescope with glass white light solar filter, I could see the sunspot active regions with plage areas around several. I enjoyed views from 25x to 40x. Good details and some active regions like AR3529, numerous smaller dark cores visible along with the lighter areas surrounding the dark core. At 40x, about 7.5 arcsecond resolution so on the Sun about 5353 km diameter visible (Sun about 0.984 au). Earth size today about 18 arcseconds. Spaceweather.com reported "Growing sunspot AR3529 has a beta-gamma magnetic field that poses a threat for strong M-class solar flares. Credit: SDO/HMI" This active region obvious along with AR3521, AR3526, AR3528, all larger than earth size active regions this morning. AR3519, AR3530, and AR3531 showed many plage areas too. I used a red and yellow filter with my eyepieces at times. The weather was very good with clear skies, temperature -1C, winds 360/4 knots and some altocumulus clouds approaching from the north with frost over the fields I viewed from. Pleasant winter solstice telescope time today
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