September 12th

Sorry for the delay in getting some images up, I was away for most of august so not many flicks from that month i'm afraid. I've put up my backlog, but without commentary or else i'll never get things posted! Anyway, back to the present...

First off a full disk in Ha, taken with the DS40 @f16 with the PL130M. Was a nice view today with the north western quadrant having a good smittering of filaments, to the east of the meridian an area of churned surface centred with a long thin filament. On the NE limb a bright area has come over where some observers managed to image some spots there. There were a few other small, bright areas on the disk in Ha. AR1106 stole the show though and I suspect we're going to see some very photogenic shots of it in the coming days. Prom wise there was nothing huge, but each quadrant had a main area of proms which were interesting in there own rights.

CaK wise things were interesting too - the norther hemisphere has a band of bright plage stretching from limb to limb, with the area of new spots in the NE fairly bright. AR1106 is glaringly obvious, easy even visually in the CaK PST for me. I'm currently 'doing some work' on the CaK PST, for some time now i've been concious that something is not quite right with the focus - removing the cover on the black box has revealed that the penta prism used for focussing is out of alignment, i've briefly had a mess about with this, with some improvement, however a final tweak is needed and this is a job for a cloudy day / night.

I've been getting into 'one shots' of late - these are shots where the disk and prominences are captured in one shot, as opposed to taking an exposure for each feature and then combining the 2 images into one in post processing. As I gradually learn more features in CS4 i'm prefering this method for capturing images as I feel it gives a view that is more like what is seen at the eyepiece - it seems more natural and less processed to me.

After the overviews it was time for me to take a peek at the areas that in my eyes were the most interesting. These are all 'one shots' taken with the DS40 @f19 with the DMK31. There was a lovely filaprom on the NW limb, with a hedgerow prom just above it. I'm sure as the the quiescent proms that are plentiful in this hemisphere get closer to the limb there will be a few more filaproms in the days ahead. A small bright area is also visible towards the bottom centre of the image.

Swinging round to the NE limb there was a beauty of a prom visible, like a big dancing flame. It was showing signs of being filapromesque. Also visible close to the limb was a bright area, which I hereby name 'Brian' following his dicovery of pores/spots there earlier. Towards the bottom right of the image the whole of the solar surface is really churned up, reminds me of grass fields blowing in the wind - central of this area is that long thin filament...

My favourite image from today is the next one of AR1106, it's a big swirling. churning chunk of sun. I just love the way those 2 big horns of plasma are poking out. Definitely looks like it has a big 'S' shaped filament that is going to come into view. I have a feeling there is going to be some beaut shots of it in the days to come. I though this migh be the worst of my images today as clouds were starting to bubble up and blow in when I got this avi, but I think it's turned out ok!

Hope you like these pics! Weather forecast isn't too clever now for the week so not optimistic of being able to get more views in - autumn is well an truly here in the UK now!

September 2nd (Late Additions!)

September 1st (Late Additions!)

August 31st (Late Additions!)

August 30th (Late Additions!)

Sun - Monday 2nd August

This is another of those 'plughole' spots - sucking material downwards to the bowels of the sun... Yesterday presented some breaks in the persistant cloud so I grabbed me some sun!
First of Ha full disk...

And colour for those who prefer it this way...

I had a go at a Cak disk, same routine ;)

Ha full disks taken with the DS40 f16 PL130M, CaK with CaK PST f16 PL130M.
I had a go at zooming in on this wonderfully active area, however I can't seem to get images i'm happy with the DMK31 at longer focal lengths... Maybe it's just the seeing as the jet stream aint to far away from me atm, I don't know... Just wish the sun would come out long enough for me to get some practice in! Anyway, here you go...

and...

and

Taken with DS40 @f20 DMK31.
Hope you like them!
Mark :)

Sun Wednesday 28th July

This is the first time in over 10 days i've been able to get a look at or image the sun. I woke up to blue skies this morning, however my easterly aspect is not only uphill, but also a horizon of rooftops, so I have to wait roughly 4 hours from sunrise till I can actually see that darn thing... This is not my best shot, the solar disk was a matter of degrees above a neighbours rooftop, and, you've guessed it cloud was racing in fast. As a result I got alot less frames than I would normally when imaging. Still, in this naff British weather a shot is a shot i guess...Lots going on on the disk today - the HUGE prom on the south eastern limb was the feature that instantly caught my eye, and the numerous filaments really stood out in the DS view. The new spot coming over the limb has a huge area of churned chromosphere associated with it.

Taken with DS40 @ f16 PL130M

Tomorrows weather promises to be better so i'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Saturday 17th July - Part 2

Following the rain of the morning and early afternoon, I was really pleased around tea time when the clouds finally broke. It was very very blustery and seeing wasn't great, but never the less it was blue sky so tme to take somemore images!

I decided to have a go at a mosaic shot, using the DS40 at f20 and the DMK31. This is something i've been wanting to have a go at for a while. I did get data for the whole disk, however upon close inspection a thin layer of high cloud was making its way across the shots for the southern half of the disk. This played havoc with the levels and meant there was considerably less image contrast than with the northern half presented below. Unfortunately it wasn't possible to marry to 2 halves of the disk up. Still, for a very first attempt i'm pretty pleased with the image below. For maximum effect click on it to get the full size version. I can see this is something i'm going to have to pursue somemore when time and weather conditions permit.


The filaprom on the northwestern limb was a great example and I think shows up pretty well in this 'one shot' - I can't decide which version I prefer the best - colour or black and white, so both are presented.

Increasing the exposure a bit more reveals the more intricate nature of the prominence part of it.

There was also a nice prom on the south easterm limb, however by now high cloud was lowering contrast and brightening the sky background.

Another nice prom was visible on the south western limb...

All in all i'm pleased with todays results - can't wait to have a go at somemore mosaics!

Saturday 17th July

Well after a week of cloud, rain and gales - good old British summer weather! this morning promised the best chance of some sun, probably for the weekend as a whole. I only managed to image for a shade over 90 seconds before the cloud, and shortly thereafter, the rain returned.In terms of todays sun, AR11087 is now in the north western quadrant of the sun, and while not as active as it has been still has plenty of detail and structure, surrounded by a huge area of disturbed chromosphere. Lots of small bitty filaments all over the disk, with a possible area of brightened plage in the north east quadrant. Of interest in the days ahead is a new area of activity coming over the south eastern limb - this is manifesting itself as an area of very bright, if small stubby, prominences - definitely something to keep an eye on. There were numerous other proms visible, however these haven't shown up great on this 'one shot' full disk image.

I thought i'd put an 'earth for scale' on the image info - boy we live on a small planet! You can click on the images to open an enlarged version in another window.

Hope you like them! Hope to get somemore captures if the clouds break this afternoon.

Mark

Sunday 11th July

Poor weather and other commitments have meant getting any solar in has been pretty much nigh impossible this last week, so I was pleased this morning when the weather had better offerings for me. Whislt not comletely clear skies, rather bands of fast moving cloud - it was a case of patiently waiting till the sun appeared in the gaps between the cloud trains, Consulting the visible satellite image I knew I had to be quick as there was a band of high cirrus rapidly moving in that I knew would play havoc with levels when imaging.

First off was the full disk. There were numerous low contrast quiescent filaments on view, however the main feature of note is AR11087. This is a very large active region that has a large 'S' shaped sinuos filament at its core. The whole area is very bright and likely correlates with some low level flaring. In addition there is also a new active region on the same longitude as 11087, but in the soouthern hemisphere, this could well prove to be interesting in the days ahead...

Next up colourised with todays proms - none of which were huge, but there were quite a few and they were quite interesting at higher magnification.

Both taken with DS40 f16 PL130M

Next up close ups of AR11087, and beneath it the new currently undesignated active region...

DS40 f20 DMK31

There was some nice prom activity today on the north eastern limb, which I think frames nicely with ar11087, so I thought i'd go for a 'one shot' of the region...

And one of the north western limb...

I could already see the haze of arriving cirrus on the horizon so moved quick to get in a few prom shots. This one is of the south western limb...

Same prom, plus one just north of the solar equator, rotated to fit...

Prom shots were taken with SM40 f20 DMK31.I couldn't resist a CaK shot just to see the expanse of 11087, and just managed this before the clouds finally rolled in bringing the days proceedings to a halt...

CaK PST f16 PL130M

Hope you like them!

Thanks for looking, Mark