Solar rotation Active region 2665

like the earth, the sun itself rotates.  its period is once every 24 days at the equator, but only once every 35 days at the poles.  this was determined by watching sunspots rotate across the surface.  

This animation shows a group of sunspots (AR2665) rotating across the disc of the sun over the course of 9 days, from July 8th to the 16th 2017: 

Sun 7/8-16/2017, AR 2665

interestingly, today (7/23/2017) this "active region" lived up to its name and spat a gigantic coronal mass ejection out into space.  fortunately, it's facing away from us, though apparently right at mars, potentially affecting satellites there.  more at spaceweather.com

a few wacko preppers are predicting earthquakes as a result.  a more balanced perspective can be found here.  In any event, if a really big one of these things hits earth, our electronics are fried.  the active region should be rotating back towards us in about a week, hopefully bringing nothing more than a few auroras.   

Hydrogen alpha versions of this region at the beginning of the rotation can be seen in a previous post:

http://astrowhw.blogspot.com/2017/07/big-prominence-this-weekend.html

Image details:

DMK 51 web cam, Takahashi FS-60C, 60 mm aperture at f/4.2 with a reducer.  Baader solar film, Tiffen 77 mm green and IR ND.6 filters.  The field of view is approximately 96x72 arc minutes.  20 second video capture at 12 fps, aligned in autostakkert, wavelets in registax.