Thursdays Prominences - 9th april

A lovely set of prominences and a small flame filament were visible on the suns northwestern limb as can be seen in this photo taken with the ED80, Quark and DMK31.

Snaking Filaments 9th April

The remnants of the 'mega-filament' that has rotated around with the sun for a third time, virtually three months, heads towards the western limb to rotate around passing out of sight.  Will we see it for a 4th rotation?  Guess we need to look in a couple of weeks.  Taken with the ED80, Quark and DMK31.

AR12320 9th April

A quick closeup of this crackling active region with the ED80, DS Quark and DMK31.

Western Quadrant 9th April

A view of the suns western limb from thursday showing an assortment of filaments and the lovely hedgerow prom that was visible on the limb.  Taken with the ED80, DS Quark, Baader Solar Telecompressor and the DMK31 camera.

Ha Full Disk 9th April

 Another glorious sunny and warm day this easter holiday and the sun was putting on a great show too, with plenty to see!  Taken with the DS40 at 700mm focal length with the DMK31 camera.

Shots With the 152/900 and the Quark 9th April

My good friend Mike Garbett came round today with a Lyra Optics 152/900 refractor he had bought - a real beast of a scope so could try a bit of modding with it to install a 75mm ERF internally on the focuser internally with a view to using it with the Quark, well the results were very promising, and I have to say, we were both surprised how little the scope 
 seemed not to be affected by the both poor seeing and also transparency.  What these images don't show that at best the sky was a milky white in colour with high to mid level clouds blowing around and interfering with the view.  The histogram on the laptop screen was moving around rapidly and contrast varying significantly, so it was the usual case of keep an eye on it and if it was appearing to have one of the better moments just hitting record and hoping the stacking software would work it's magic with the results as usual.  The view through the eyepiece, and we tried a few including a 32mm Meade plossl and also the very good Lunt zoom were jaw dropping, showing plenty of high contrast very 3D looking detail.  Certainly a better view than the few Lunt 152s I have looked through, and especially as this scope is apparently the same (GSO) model that Lunt use for there 152 scope and the combination of this, the Quark and the D-ERF used were about 20% of the price of the Lunt that you would pay in the UK.  Yes, you can get a full disk view with the big Lunt, but that's not really what this scope is designed for.  I will certainly be interested to see how Mike gets on with this scope and have to admit after using it briefly yesterday that it is one that I have added to my wish list!

Hovering Filaments - 7th April

Filaments are huge clouds of cool plasma held above the suns surface by magnetic fields.  The huge solar clouds can hang around for days or weeks at a time before sometimes just gradually dissipating and drifting away, or sometimes being thrown from the sun more dramatically as the magnetic field lines snap explosively and dramatically.  As they rotate over the suns limb they form a filaprom before finally a prominence as they rotate out of view over the limb.  This image was taken with the DS Quark, 100mm f10 Tal100R refractor, 0.6x focal reducer and an Imaging source DMK31 camera.