The Dutch Observatory

Not many clouds in the morning, but stability was not good again.  Today only a full disk image with active regions AR1704, 06, 07, 08.

Another day with medium seeing conditions.  Today three active regions and not much flare activity, but a nice prominence at the Eastern limb..

Finally after 8 days of rain, clouds and cold the sun was out today!!  Made a whole disk image and a closeup of a prominence and the surroundings of Active Region 1704.  The sun has been quiet today with only a B1.9 flare in 1702.  Waiting for more things to happen in this Carington Rotation 2135.

Frank Garner, Jim Honeycut and myself went out again to the Dove Fields at Charlie Elliott Wildlife Center to image the Comet.  This time I also brought my C11 and wanted to get a closer look at the comet.  So today I have still photo, an animation which has many gaps because I had to image on the C11 also, and a somewhat diappointing closeup taken with the C11.  This is a stack of 12 x 5 sec images. 

Catching up with the last images in Carington Rotation 2134 which were captured on 3/13 and 3/19.  The closeups let you compare nicely how the active regions 92 and 95 evolved.

This was our scheduled meeting day. Did not make it to the meeting, but to the observing session after the meeting.  First at the Dove Fields where I stayed until the comet set in the west.  We must have had two dozen visitors that wanted to see the comet. Despite some small clouds at the horizon, they all left having seen the comet through binos and a small telescope and some of them I am sure made some great pictures of the comet.  Here two images (out of 48) one taken at 8:31 the second 18 minutes later at a focal length of 250mm. 

Another observing session from the Dove Fields at CE. We had 13 people on the field. Five visitors who were there also on Sunday at Lake Varner, and Kitty made a very nice closeup of the comet.  I tried to do too much by bringing my SVC80 and trying to capture the comet through Frank’s refractor.  Could not get the comet on the chip of the DMK or maybe bring it in focus, so I lacked the time to keep track of my Canon.  Therefore limiting today to only one image and waiting for another chance.

After a rainy evening on Monday, we went to Charlie Elliott’s Dove Fields.  This place has a 1.5 degree horizon and is an ideal place for watching the Comet.  We had 6 CE members showing up.  First we located the moon and from there it was a snap to find the comet.  Everyone saw it through binos and even through Marilyn Edwards Dob.  A great evening.  Here my image of tonight and an animation of the moon and the comet setting in the west. Click the image for the larger version and the animation.

I made around 60 images of the comet, however, only 8 or 9 turned out to be usable for a time lapse.  The rest did not show the comet, or it was blurred and would have distracted more than contribute.  Here a link to the timelapse in my gallery.

We have been hunting the comet C/2011 L4 for three days now.  I caught it on my camera two days ago, but did not have my remote with me resulting in the image being exposed to cross movement.  Tonight I had the remote with me and here one of the images I took tonight.