The Dutch Observatory

I’ve been eye balling the next ISS transit oportunity.  A few weeks back there was a transit with Saturn, but clouds took care of that.  We had a Lunar pass, but this one was 60 miles away, and it interfered with an outreach event.  So today we have a transit with Jupiter , amost in dowtown Social Circle.  Pathwidth is only 330 feet and I believe the ISS at a brightness of Mag 2.4 would possibly be impossible to see in the glare of the sun.  But…. not to worry about all that.  Its cloudy anyway……..

Today was the warmest day of the year so far.  It probably hit 80 degrees.  A bit windy but nice for some imaging. 

A nice day for imaging.  Today I did experiment with different camera settings for H-alpha captures.  I also made an animation of 1 Hr. of active region 63 and 64.  However, no prominances flaring during that time.  Here the full disk images both in H-alpha and Calcium-K with inverted images also.

Very cloudy this morning, but soon the clouds started breaking.  However the blue spells between the clouds were short and the clouds moved very fast.  So it created all kind of handicaps in imaging.  None the less, I captured these images with a new active region showing up at the eastern side of the sun (right in these images)

Clouds in the forecast, but I was able to capture these images before they came.  An H-alpha and an Ha-inverted image as well as another CaK showing AR1162 before it moves to the backside of the sun.

It was cloudy early today, but the clouds broke around 9:30 and I made my usual solar image(s).  AR1161 and 62 are getting ready to move to the backside of the sun and some new filaments are showing at the eastern side.

The last few days I have made two animations of the Active Region 1161.  click on the links to link to the activation and see how the filaments lurch out of the region.  The colored version is a 30 minute animation the b/w is one hour of activity.

Another Sunny day with a few clouds moving through.  AR1158 is approaching the western linb of the sun, while AR1161 is full of activity and even expanding  with another sunspot region AR1162.  Some activity can be seen at the Eastern limb.  Here the Ha and CaK images of today

When the fog burned off it was nice and clear for a while.  Today I was testing the SolarMax40 with the correct blockong filter.  I was pleasantly surprised.  The detail looked at least as good as the LS35 and in addition, it was a lot easier to focus with a helical focusser, which does not turn the camera also as does the LS35.  So here the images of today.

today a lot of puffy clouds kept chasing through the sky making it hard to image, so I mainly used the Lunt LS35 today.  Here a whole disk image and a close up of AR1161.