Space weather: solar flare on Sun sparks pretty auroras and radio blackouts on Earth

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My kids and I have been using our 8" reflector telescope to project the sun onto the ceiling after school, we have been noticing the sunspot counts being more then usual.
The trick is to uncap and aim quickly, my daughter was taking her time one day with the elevation setting and the telescope started to smoke, we think it was cooking oil or paint from the threaded rod to the mirror that reflects the image 90deg between the concave mirror and the viewing lenses.
Other celestial objects are not so interesting to the kids, the moon is fun sometimes, but they like to try to tune distant shortwave stations when they can see heavy sunspots.

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