The Dutch Observatory

It has been over a week since I could image the sun because of the time involved seeing the Curiosity launch. But when I saw the sun this morning I could not believe my eyes about the size of the prominence at the eastern limb. Absolutely breath taking at about 7 times the size of earth!  Also the sunspots about to leave the sun are surrounded by some nice filaments. Great to see the sun is still very active

Today, the Walton Tribune carried my feelings and emotions during the launch of Curiosity to a larger audience by publishing an article and a picture of me in front of the countdown clock.  Click here to read the article. Curiosity is well on its way now.  In fact a fellow Solar System Ambassador Patrick Wiggins in Utah caught it on its way to Mars on the 27th when it was close at the junctior of Monoceros, Hydra and Canis Minor.  Click the image to see it move through the field of view.

Saturday morning I did not hear the alarm clock, but managed to get to the pickup site at the Space Coast Stadium at 5:45 a.m. I got on bus 10 out of 60 and we got to our viewing site at the Banana Creek viewing area next to the Apollo/Saturn building around 6:45. It was still relative dark and rain clouds were abundant. We received two short showers about 2 hours before the launch. The sunrise was very nice through the thick clouds. The count down clock (being about 37 minutes fast) was stopped at -2:00:00 and again at -4 minutes. NASA Administrator Bolden gave a speech and 2 minutes before launch the 3500 viewers at our location sang the National Anthem, which brought the emotions high. As the clock approached 0 you could hear a pin drop, but as the rocket did lift off, a roar released the silence as everyone kept their eyes on the Atlas 5 with Curiosity on top. The roar of the Atlas 5 with 4 solid rocket boosters was not as loud as with the space shuttle, but seeing the fire and smoke this close across the water and marshes made this launch unforgettable.  A perfect launch.  The very high humidity made it a bit murky to make pictures from our site, but I will never forget the emotions in me when Curiosity set of on its voyage to Mars. Click here for some pictures from the time leading up to the launch.

Well we left after the launch and the trip home on the Saturday after Thanks giving took us 10 hours! Almost two hours were spend to cover a 20 mile strip before the Florida Turnpike merges with I-75. But we made it.
The launch was spectacular and it was a real experience to see in person what happened accross the water and marshes 4.5 miles away. My son let me use his 200mm zoom lens for my camera, and leaning the camera on the railing of the bleachers of the viewing area, I just kept the shutter button pressed with the camera set on continuous shooting until the camera stopped. (Out of space or power). Here one of the cropped images.

Today the skies were cloudy but around noon they broke a little. Enough to get a whole disk image in, but not enough to image the filament closeupin addition.  The trees to the south west started to cast their shadows on the image.  I could see the needles of the pinetrees move accross the image.  So today only a full disk image normally processed and inverse

Clear skies today. A beautiful view to see the large filament streching out over 500,000 miles accross the surface of the sun. Wow would I like to image this if/when it collapses. Also the trio 1351, 53, 54 makes a nice eastern limb and processed inverted, they look “3D”. Can’t wait to see what tomorrow will bring.

The sun is out again at the Dutch Observatory. Life is good!!! The face of the sun has changed a lot since my last imaging session. A full image today and closeups of the Eastern and Western limbs. 7 Active regions AR1341, 42, 43,  46, 47, 50 and 51 with a nice view of the proms and the filaments close to the rim.

I did attend yet another NASA/JPL conference call about MSL and Curiosity.  It is absolutely mindboggling how complex this rover is and all is powered by a 110 watt power generator.   Can’t wait until its launch on the 25th!

This morning we had clouds moving through which gave me time to work on my animation of the SE prom from yesterday.  I made first a movie, but could not get the fps right to see it right, so went through an additional step and made an animated gif.  Shown is the 45 minute movement in the prom compressed in a few seconds.  Please let it load to see the proper motion.

The Proms on the Eastern limb were still there today, allowing me to capture sufficient data to make a 45 minute animation when I have time to process this.  Here the full disk image with closeups of the Proms.