These H-alpha images were taken in the afternoon of 08-Nov-02. A low-elevation mid-autumn Sun and blustering winds made the capture quite challenging. The massive filament in the lower left quadrant extrends from below AR 0191 across the disk to AR 0190. To the right lies sunspot regions AR 0182 and AR 0180, the latter encompassed in a tangle of filaments. The major filament/prominence area is shown below and AR 0180 is in the bottom image.
Active Region 0180 is prominently displayed in the center of this image, wrapped in a tangle of filaments that extends about 10 Earth diameters in breadth. This turbulent area unleashed its fury 12 hours after these shots were taken,  issuing a massive Flare and hurling a tremendous Coronal Mass Ejection towards us.

Images taken with a Coronado Solarmax90/T-Max and 30mm blocking filter attached to a Takahashi FS128 using a Canon EOS D60 digital SLR using TeleVue 2x and 4x Powermates with T-Adapters. Processing was done in Images Plus and final polishing in Adobe PhotoShop.

I was honored to have these images featured in the January 2003 edition of Coelum Astronomia!