Wintertime high pressure is sat squarely over the UK at the moment, and with it comes deep blue skies and cold temperatures. This is great for solar observing, however on my local horizon the sun only gets about 6 or 7 degrees altitude above it - the downside of this is poor seeing, this is most notable in solar images on the limb. which appears to dance and wave in the atmospheric instability. From an imaging point of view this renders (at this resolution!) the spicules and proms on the limb invisible when doing a one shot. However I really took my time in getting a good flat and this has paid dividends in eeking out as much disk detail as possible. Taken with the DS40 @ f21, DMK31.
Images of the Sun, our local star, at a range of wavelengths with specialist solar telescopes. Imaging tutorials, solar bits and pieces for sale, talks and outreach with the Charlie Bates Solar Astronomy Project CBSAP.
Sunday, 15 January 2012
Saturday, 7 January 2012
Proms! 7th January 2012
Some of the best proms i've seen for a while were visible this morning. This was taken with the DS40 @ f26, DMK31. Actually very good seeing for such a low altitude sun...
Filaprom - 7th January 2012
One of the best filaproms i've seen for a while! Taken with DS40, 2.5x powermate - f26 DMK31.
Hydrogen Alpha Full Disk - 7th Janury 2012
An unexpected blue sky this morning allowed me to get some imaging in: absolutely loads going on! Filaproms, proms, filaments and flares! Slightly overexposed on the flaring regions but atleast this shows up the proms a bit better! Taken with the DS40 @ f21, DMK31.
Tuesday, 3 January 2012
First Sun of the New Year!
I've really lucky this year to get as many images in as I have, though this has been helped by a neighbour who considerably cut down a tree that had been a blot on my southern horizon. This has given me a daily hour long window in the winter months to observe and image the sun.
As we start in 2012 the sun is showing plenty of activity as we approach solar max (even if it is a weak solar max!). There are filaments galore on todays disk, with the southern hemisphere being dominated by behemoth AR1389.
This is the first shot taken with my recently modded DS40 scope, more details can be found about this on Stephen Ramsdens excellent solar forum...
http://solarchat.natca.net/index.php/en/forum/12-solar-scope-modifications/4067-modified-sm40-a-story-of-evolution#4067
Late December Sunshine!
With only a few days to go until the solstice I was really surprised to get my last image of 2011 in!
Friday, 25 November 2011
Late November Sunshine...
Well I though my previous blog entry would have been the last of the season: here in downtown Brierley Hills my southern horizon looks uphill so is falsely elavated, there is however a window of about an hour that I have when the sun passes in a gap between 2 houses. Fortunately for me I was able to capitalise on this and despite some high cloud and very poor seeing I was reasonably pleased with the result.
There is lots to see on the sun today - the filaments are numerous and are almost knotted together. The northern hemisphere is definitely the most active with several active regions. However purely by chance I managed to capture the brightening of a small flare on the south eastern limb.
The shot was taken as a 6 pane mosaic, with the DS40 @ f21 with DMK31 camera. The scope is soon to be further modified with the removal of the stock Coronado ERF and replacement with a Baader 7nm Ha filter. this will significantly reduce thermal load on the blocking filter, and with a higher transmission and tighter bandpass should should an improvement in contrast on what is currently seen. This is my christmas project and I look forward to testing it out and getting some results. I think there is still a bit more that can be squeezed out of the the DS40.
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