Now we are past the winter solstice, with each passing day the sun gets progressively higher in the sky, the days become longer and the nights shorter. Despite it only being just past the middle of january this really struck me today - I now have a viewing window of about an hour and half compared to a mere 45 minutes just a few weeks ago; in a few weeks time when we are in february I will be able to observe straight for a 3 hour run. The sun was a mere 16 degrees altitude when this image was taken, but was high enough to let me image with the 40mm at f20 with the DMK31 to produce a 6 pane mosaic. I have been tweaking the filter arrangement and this shows when viewed full size the spicule ring, spicules and proms quite clearly - quite rare in CaK images! It will certainly be interesting imaging later in the year with the sun much higher in the sky and with the 100mm scope.
