Carden Festival Sun

Vicki and I were busy yesterday - but nothing compared to organizing the Carden Festival.
Big thanks from me to Mark and Tom, the tips of the melting icebergs that I met personally. Please pass my thanks along to the unknown-to-me majority of helpers and doers who oil the ancient joints and make the
many varied programs proceed smoothly. I saw some very good bird houses and painted owls so there was
also much patience and ability on both sides on display.
I offered to show visitors the sun through an H-Alpha solar telescope, donated to the Orillia Astronomy Club, and answer some questions about the relationship between the sun and earth. There was some interest in the connection to northern lights/aurora borealis.
Here are a couple of impressions from the early morning:

Eventually the grass would be flattened in a semi-circle around the telescope as the vistors looked at promonences and sunspots from 8:30am to 4:30pm.

I showed a sequence of solar images from the past 4 days to give a feeling for what was being seen and how the sun was rotating:

Today I downloaded some H-alpha images that match what we saw yesterday:

And who enjoyed these moments? Grand daughters and grand women and in between!

The solar activity that we saw is rotating around for a possible frontal impact on earth in 5 to 10 days - no promises, but if you do not look you won't see anything either! So here you can see the phases of the moon
And this is what aurora might look like from Orillia - better from a dark site like Carden, or the Torrance Barrens:

If you want to check the current solar activity you might look here. And if you are interested in SOHO and some of its instrumentation and results and how astronomers can "see" the far side of the sun (There is also a layman's explanation here.

Do not forget yout sunscreen - I didn't but did forget to put it on - OUCH!
From the not so wise old bird.

Oh yes, I forgot that an alien visited me:

I think a saddlebag. wob