At our May meeting Ken Martin will present the month’s astrophotos, then Jerry Oltion will talk about our nearest star, the Sun. Looking at the Sun through a telescope or binoculars requires special equipment, but that equipment isn’t difficult to buy or even build yourself. And the view is spectacular, especially if you have the capability to view it in the single wavelength of hydrogen-alpha light. (The Sun is mostly hydrogen, so if you can restrict your view to the light given off by ionized hydrogen, you can see the chromosphere where most of the action is.) With that view you can see prominences and filaments standing out from the Sun’s surface, the granulation of convection cells, the disturbed areas around sunspots, and even solar flares, the incredible explosions that happen when powerful magnetic fields disconnect and reconnect.

Jerry will describe how to make a simple solar filter and how to use it safely, and he will also get into some of the physics of the Sun’s interior workings, such as why we have an 11-year sunspot cycle, what’s going on down at the Sun’s core, and what will happen to the Sun (and our solar system) when that core runs out of fuel in about 5 billion years.

Come learn some interesting facts about our nearest star! The meeting is at 7:00 on Thursday, May 21st at the Eugene Science Center planetarium, 2300 Leo Harris Parkway in Eugene (behind Autzen Stadium).