Calcium Swathe 23rd January

I tried out my new 127/1200 refractor yesterday for a bit of calcium, I thought stopping down to 60mm would be fine, but the seeing really was that bad, realistically I should have stuck to 40mm. My plan is to have range of scopes that will be stopped accordingly to match the sampling of the pixel size of the camera used, with the size of the scope matching what the seeing allows. I plan to use this scope and camera combination at 72mm which will give me f16 at the filter. I had to do a lot of psot processing to salvage this image, normally my calcium images are minimally processed. Even with dodging snow showers to image it is worth it!

AR12797 & AR12798 in Ha 23rd January

Difficult to observe in the snow with passing snow showers, but I wanted to get out and take a look. Using the SM90 I struggled to get evenly on band without my laptop screen and this was my best effort. The filaments closer to the limb highlight the solar jet stream of magnetic activity associated with cycle 25.

CaK Full Disk 22nd January

The weather went from total clear skies to cloudy unexpectedly today over about 20 minutes. Fortunately I was able to grab a quick Cak disk with the 60mm f16 setup before the clouds sealed the sky. Its nice to see the sun getting steadily higher in the sky and also the new active region that has formed in the northern hemisphere over the past 24 hours. Something is also about to round in the northern hemisphere over the eastern limb. Looks like theres things to look at in the days ahead if the weather obliges, fingers crossed!

AR12796 in Ha - 16th January

There was just enough time to run off just over 1000 frames for this image before the cloud rolled in. I did manage to get the filter tuned properly, but wasn't enough time to get rid of the dust bunnies off the chip. The new active region looks nice as do the filaments.

Ha Full Disk 16th JAnuary

The sun came out briefly, very briefly, on Saturday lunchtime. I managed a full disk but didn't get time to tune it properly. Nice to get an overview though!

CaK Full Disk 31st December 2020

December has been a productive month for me solar wise, no doubt helped by clear skies at the weekends, but also by the concrete observing pad constructed during lock down in May which gives me a view of the afternoon sunshine in winter time. It's nice as we come to the end of the year solar cycle 25 is firmly active in the suns southern hemisphere. I used the Coronado 40mm f10 scope with a 2x Cemax barlow along with the FLIR GH3 91S6M camera for this full disk.

Filaments and Prominences 31st December 2020

Todays sun looked great in the eyepiece earlier with the most dramatic feature being the prominences and filaments. Both are the same feature and are clouds of cool plasma held aloft by magnetic fields.

Ha Full Disk 31st December 2020

It was nice to see some sunshine today as this Ha full disk image shows!

CaK Views 27th December

Seeing is never going to be on side with the low winter sun at this time of year, but the 40mm Coronado scope showed itself to be a great performer at these shorter wavelengths, reveling all the large scale activity in the suns southern hemisphere at the moment.

Ha Views 27th December

I was fortunate enough to be able to image on the morning of 27th December. Here are the views taken with the 50mm double stacked portable kit.

AR12790 Departing 12th December

AR12790 gets ever closer to the limb in this image taken with a Lunt 50 etalon double stacked with a Daystar Quark and using a FLIR IMX174 camera.

Prom! 12th December

There was a lovely prom visible on the suns north western limb today, looked really nice through the eyepiece.

New Active Region 12th December

More activity rounds the sun as this as yet undesignated active region put in an appearance.  The Stereo image indicates a few more are to follow.

Ha Full Disk 12th December

It was nice to get some sunshine this Saturday afternoon, and despite the sun being quieter than it was a couple of weeks ago there is considerably more activity than there was in solar minimum.  The southern hemisphere is still currently the most active.  Taken with a Lunt 50 etalon, double stacked with a Daystar Quark and a FLIR GH3 91S6M camera.

Ha Full Disk 5th December.

Activity really is increasing on the sun, particularly so in the southern hemisphere which has just erupted into life over a couple of solar rotations.  I was fortunate to be able to observe as the forecast was for sleet all day, but turned out quite nice and predominantly blue skies.  The observing pad I created during the first lockdown is working well, and in conjunction with my 7 foot pier looking over a 6 foot fence to see the sun is quite feasible.  It has a bit of bounce to it and is only really suitable for smaller scopes, but, in winter, with the low sun this is not a problem.  As the sun gets higher in the sky in the spring I will replace the 7 foot pier with the 5 foot pier which is notably more stable.  This image was taken with a Lunt 50 etalon on a 60mm f6 scope and then double stacked with a Daystar Quark.