May 2000 showed intense solar activity

May 15th and 16th good weather conditions allowed to take pictures of the sun on two consecutive days, to see the evolution of sunspots.

On all images the LX-200 was covered by a Thousand Oaks solar filter. The aperture was reduced to about 3 inches diameter. Color was obtained through addition of red and green filtered images.

Full sun image showing the importance of the sunspots :

Technical data
May 16, 2000, F3,3 focal reducer, Mosaic of 6 images, each image being an average of 5 x .11s exposures.

Sunspots May 15th:

Sunspots May 16th:

Technical data:
F6.3 focal reducer, average of 5 x .11s exposures, Maximum entropy restoration.

It is interesting to note how fast the shape of the spots evolves in 24 hours. Also, these 2 pictures evidence the rotation of the sun (25.38 days rotation period along solar equator).