Gibbous Moon 28th November

I got up early in the morning to take this shot of the moon that was high on the meridian aroun 5am. The LZOS 100/800 is an excellent scope and i'm very much looking forward to using it more when the weather allows.

Near Full Moon 21st November

The weather seems to have been cloudy for weeks here as we slip from autumn towards winter. Reflected sunlight today, and I was keen to try my New LZOS100/800 refractor on the moon. Visually there was oodles of contrasted detail that could be seen and I spent some time taking in the view. Optically the refractor is as close to perfect as you can get and is quick to show up the failings of eyepieces. This image was taken at prime focus using the FLIR GH3 U3 91S6M camera.

Reykjavik Auroras - 30th October 2021

It was the 'super storm' that wasn't last night. NASA boffins predicted the Coronal Mass Ejection would hit at 18:00ut with auroras lasting for days. It didn't, it may have not even arrived yet, what did hit was a glancing blow from another solar flare that occurred earlier in the week, hitting at more like 22:00ut. For about an hour and half the sky was wild with aurora, but then by midnight it had died right off, and by 05:00ut all that remained was a quiescent green arc. This time lapse is over about 10 minutes at around 22:30ut. Despite the bright lights of Reykjavik it was still seen reflecting in the waters of the bay. Just glad we managed to finish our week with aurora. After taking these shots it was time to head back to the hotel for 3 hours sleep before having to get the shuttle back to the airport... Good times!

Calcium Overview - 3rd October

The seeing was decidedly ropey, and as I was struggling at 90mm in Ha, I decided to play it safe and to drop right back to 40mm in CaK. Whilst the resolution isn't great it is nice to see the features on view.

Ha Sun 3rd October

It was nice to get some autumn sunshine, and despite poor seeing I just about got some usable images from the Coronado DS90, 2x Cemax barlow and the ZWO290mm camera. It's good to see all this activity on the sun again.

Sunday Proms! 19th September

The gaps were very fleeting on Sunday, and there was a lot of haze, but there were some lovely proms and I did get this image with the Coronado DS90, 2x Cemax barlow and the ZWO290mm camera. I was really ;ucky that before imaging I was taking the view in through the eyepiece and saw a passenger jet transit the sun.

Ha Full Disk 18th September

A quick full disk of a rather quiet sun taken with the Lunt LS50C etalon, Coronado BF15, 2x cemax barlow and a 1.7a blocker by Apollo Lasky. The addition of the blocker clearly increases contrast on the disk, with the effect of the etalons bandpass being reduced by 0.1-0.2a. The filaments had more contrast and were darker, and the surface had a more textured appearance. Certainly something to explore the use of more!

Sunday Sunshine 5th September

A busy summer and less than summery weather at times has meant i've not been able to image as much as I like, however a cloudy forecast for Sunday was actually the reverse and clear skies prevailed. The full disk was taken with the double stacked 50mm scope, and the close ups with the double stacked 90mm scope.
It's nice to see activity finally picking up properly again on the sun!

Ha Sun 26th July

I've done a lot of calcium images lately, and with a drop in seeing quality decided to shift wavelengths down to Ha for a double stack view of the various filaments and plage that were visible.

Calcium Sun 22nd July

More good weather, more good seeing, this time the sun in Ha and also CaK:

Calcium Sun 21st July

The good weather and good seeing carried on, so I carried on imaging the sun is CaK light as there were plenty of features to be looking at!

Calcium Sun 20th July

A whole booty of images from this day at a range of scales!