Observing report for 4/11/01 Solar observation from driveway Equipment used: C-8 orange tube, full aperture solar filter, televue diagonal, Pentax 28 mm eyepiece Set up around 11:00 a.m. EDT with the intent of photographing through the hydrogen prominence filter. First step was to observe sunspots through normal filter, take a few photos, then move on. I was very impressed with the number of sunspots visible today. I counted 8 families, and numbered them west to east 1-8 beginning on the right side of the sun's disk as viewed through the scope. There was one 'A' group, 2 'B' groups, 3 'C' groups, 1 'D' group and 1 'F' group as I identified them. Anyone with experience may have classified them differently. That's okay, I'm learning. What was impressive was the total number of sunspots. I counted 42 total sunspots with the one eyepiece. Some were very small, but the one on the lower left quadrant of the sun (my number 6) was absolutely huge. At least three large sunspots were encompassed by one large penumbral region. This group was probably the size of a smaller gas giant planet. The smallest group was the one I numbered 5 and was just left of center, consisting of 3 small sunspots. I was very impressed with the numbers and spacing of all the sunspots, so loaded film in the camera and got ready to photograph. I was trying to focus and was having tremendous difficulty when I looked at the sky and a rather thick layer of high level clouds obscured any clear image. The sky was completely gray, so I tore it all down to get ready for another day. Larry