I hate to sound like a total solar viewing noob but....since I only have one or two dozen hours experience, I think I am.
Last Thursday (12 July 2018) I had the Daystar quark + 102 mm refractor out and caught some nice prominence activity. I am referring to visual observation, not photography. Working with my variable polarizing filter, I was able to "tune the view" more for solar surface features and less for the prominences. The prominences were distracting, to be sure, but I wanted to see what else was going on.
I saw feathery thin gray lines curving (mostly in parallel) towards spot-like regions on the sun. The spot like regions had no faculae or gray lines of their own. (Which is not to say that such details might not emerge in imaging; I'm just saying what I saw)
Although I have seen sunspots in h-alpha I deceived myself into thinking that maybe they *were* sunspots--either sunspots that were emerging, or sunspots that were fading. To double check I slapped on my Baader white light solar filter and saw....nothing. Plain white disk. I was half expecting to see real sunspots there.
So, anyhow, reading the posts here, I'm assuming I saw two "active regions." They were pretty close together. I'm inquiring whether that is true and what, if any, relation there is between a sunspot and an active region.
Thanks for your help,
Greg N
Edited by gnowellsct, 17 July 2018 - 10:53 PM.