Solar Astronomy at JOG
We’ve been fortunate enough to recently acquire a telescope for the school and, as of last week, also a solar filter that allows us to observe the Sun directly in the day; this has been incredibly enlightening for the GCSE Astronomy and A-level Physics students studying the behaviour of the Sun. Here is a spectacular image which was captured with the telescope.
The Sun appears orange rather than white due to our atmosphere preferentially scattering blue light and thereby removing the blue colour from the Sun, it’s also why our sky looks blue, and the effect is called Rayleigh scattering.
So, what are the black ‘spots’ covering the Sun? These are sunspots, approximately 10,000km across, nearly as wide as the Earth and show areas of intense magnetic activity. These are just below the surface of the Sun known as the photosphere. This activity leads to an absence of photons (energy) reaching parts of the photosphere thereby becoming cooler and dimmer in colour. The sunspots below are from the central northern part of the above image:
Sunspots are found in pairs because each ‘end’ of the sunspot acts like half of a bar magnet and is connected by incredibly strong magnetic fields. They can ‘survive’ for anything from a few hours to months.
Some other features in the image are trickier to see for e.g., on the North-Western limb (edge) of the solar disk of the same image you can observe a lighter orange patina amongst the darker orange. These are known as faculae; they are more challenging to observe due to the subtle difference in contrast between them and the rest of the solar disk. The faculae are regions of more intense magnetic activity leading to extremely high temperatures ~8000K.
Our students will continue to monitor sunspot activity over the next few months to see how they change as their movement on the photosphere will inform us about the rotational period of the Sun. This can be quite tricky as the Sun isn’t a solid in fact the poles rotate more quickly than at the equator!
NB: Never observe the Sun without specifically designed eyewear and never point binoculars or telescopes at them. Irreversible damage will occur to your eyes or equipment.
Mr F.Lear
Teacher of Physics and Astronomy
Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society
Cooking with the 6Th Trowbridge Cubs
re not able to host this special evening this year. We didn’t want to not do anything, so we decided to record the concert for you to enjoy at home. Staff and students from years 7 through to year 13 came down to Holy Trinity Church to film their songs and instrumental pieces.
