Partial Solar Eclipse

Last Thursday we witnessed a partial solar eclipse of the Sun- and for some reason this particular eclipse did not grab the attention of the media the way that the past few have.  It seemed that there were far more stories in the popular media for the lunar eclipse a couple weeks ago than for this event, despite the lunar eclipse happening in the middle of the night and the solar eclipse happening in mid-afternoon.  I was up at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter with my colleagues (we streamed the eclipse live) and took the opportunity to take some images of the eclipse of my own.

I was using my Stellarvue 90mm triplet refractor with a Lunt Solar Systems Herschel Prism and my Canon T2i.  All the images were taken at 1/4000 of a second, ISO 100 and were shot in raw format.  I was shooting at a very high shutter speed in order to try and minimize the effects of atmospheric turbulence in my images.  I later used photoshop to increase the exposure value and stretch the contrast of the images.  Overall, the seeing conditions ranged from good to spectacular during the first part of the eclipse, but as mid-eclipse approached the conditions deteriorated slightly.  Below are a few of the best images that I captured, and as always, click to enlarge.

Start of Eclipse

Sharpest of my images, quite happy with this one!

Near greatest eclipse

A nice view after maximum eclipse, atmosphere not as stable

EDIT: The large sunspot region on the face of the Sun during the eclipse, Active Region 12192, has produced (as of yesterday) 9 X-class flares and is obviously quite large.  "How large" you are wondering?...well the blog of the SDO mission has published an interesting post comparing AR 12192 to previous spots.  If you look at the graph they provide you will see that this is the largest spot region (by area) in the past two solar cycles!  They report that it is the 33rd largest on record, and within the top .01% of all spots.  Pretty impressive stuff!

We were rather lucky to have this spot during the eclipse, and even luckier that it was in the Sun's southern hemisphere and not eclipsed by the moon, making for some pretty pictures.  Looking forward to the August 2017 Total Eclipse!

Hydrogen hotness

I spent the better part of this weekend in Denver, Colorado and it seems that while I was gone Tucson went from the humidity of monsoon season to hot and dry.  While the weather in Colorado was perfect (to this Arizonan) with daytime temperatures in the low 80's and early afternoon showers, the weather back home is reminding us that our rainy season is all too fleeting.  It is hot and dry again, with the hope of some last gasp monsoon activity late in the week.  Before long, the sights and sounds of thunderstorms will be gone for another year.

Of course the upside to drying out is the return of the clear skies that make Southern Arizona a mecca for amateur astronomers.  As the coffee was brewing this morning I stepped outside and was immediately moved to set up my solar telescope and do some observing of the Sun for the first time in months.  The skies were bright blue with no breeze and observing the Sun with my hydrogen alpha telescope confirmed that the atmosphere was fairly steady as well.  After a few minutes observing I finished a cup of java and decided to try and image through the telescope.  It has been some time since I last attempted this and immediately recognized how out of practice I was.  Focusing was difficult, tuning the etalon filter to achieve detail on the laptop screen was challenging, and getting the gain, gamma and exposure times to balance out nicely was nearly a chore.  Looking in the mirror I do not see an astrophotographer.

Even my post-processing routine was something of a distant memory.  I had taken 30-second videos of the Sun at the full resolution of the ASI120MC sensor (my astronomical video camera) as well as binned 2x2.  The best 300 frames (out of about 900) were aligned and stacked in registax with some sharpening and denoising applied as well.  First up, the binned image:

Next is the full resolution image and you can see that the atmosphere was impacting the final image more than when binning during capture.  The active region left of center was, I think, flaring subtly during the exposure as it seemed to brighten slightly more even after I pulled the camera and put the eyepiece back in.  Click the image to enlarge it to full size

So what is the endgame of this sweaty exercise this morning?  Well, I am motivated for the first time since June to spend several hours after dark looking through my telescope!

Spotting a solar prominence and prominent solar spots

Spending this weekend at home, catching up on all the wonderful responsibilities and tasks that accompany being a husband, father and law abiding citizen, finally afforded me some time to enjoy observing the Sun.  As much as I enjoy preparing my state and federal taxes I believe I enjoy observing more...and the good news this year is that I do not need to pawn an eyepiece or two to pay a tax bill.

Saturday I spent a bit of time observing the Sun through my 60mm Hydrogen Alpha telescope, and was just starting to take some images when the power went out in our neighborhood.  Fortunately, I had already captured an image of a fantastic prominence before the power went out...and it is presented below.  I had to blow out the disc in order to expose the prominence, but you can see just how impressive it was.  Consider that the Sun is about a million miles in diameter and that this prominence was approximately 15% of the solar diameter in size and it is safe to assume that this tower of plasma was standing at least 150,000 miles high!

This morning I opened up my observatory and used my 90mm Stellarvue triplet equipped with a Lunt Solar Systems Herschel Prism to observe the Sun in white light.  I was rewarded with some steady views that showed several spot regions.  Below is a stack of 300 frames taken with my ASI120MC camera, at 9:04 AM local time (1604 UT).  Click the image to enlarge it to full size.

For comparison, here is an image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory taken near the same time with the active regions labelled.  As you can see, good optics, a decent camera and steady seeing can produce some impressive results!

NOAA Active Region 11944

When it comes to active regions (AR) on the Sun, this one is big...how big?  By my estimation, AR11944 is larger than Jupiter.  Click on the SDO image and scale at left to enlarge, and remember that the sunspots are contained within a larger region of magnetic activity.  This region made it's way around the Sun's eastern limb on New Years Day, and I expect that we will be able to observe this region and it's accompanying spots for approximately two weeks as it transits (the Sun rotates from east to west with a rotational period of approximately 25 days at the equator).  Below are two images from this morning, taken through my 90mm Stellarvue triplet and Lunt Solar Systems Herschel Prism.  They represent stacks of 750 frames (out of 3000) in average seeing captured with an ASI120MC camera.  This region is on the southeast limb of the Sun, but I liked the composition better as presented-

Below is a second image of the region, taken with the addition of a 2x Barlow lens- and I am not sure why, but blogger seems to compress images and much of the solar granulation is blurred, particularly above the spots...but at least the spots survived the blog platform!

If you have a solar telescope, this is one region worth taking a gander at...and, I suspect this region is large enough to be seen naked eye with the appropriate solar filter to protect one's eyes.

Happy New Year!

Today marks not only the New Year, but also the fourth anniversary of this blog...and most importantly my 18th wedding anniversary!  Life has treated me well and I am quite fortunate to have such a wonderful spouse and son.  18 years has gone by in the blink of an eye, and it seems only yesterday I was eyeing that cute grad student with the southern accent and the smell of eucalyptus in her hair.

It is somewhat of a personal tradition that I try to celebrate all holidays with a little observing and this morning I set up both my hydrogen alpha and white light solar telescopes.  There is a fair bit of action on the Sun and I took some images through both telescopes.  I began with the white light and took the images below.  All images are presented with north up and west to the right.

The seeing was steady enough that in addition to the images straight through the 90mm Stellarvue triplet, I was able to utilize a 2x barlow.

Finally, while the seeing was slowly worsening (as typically happens as the day progresses and the air and ground warm up) I was able to grab an image in hydrogen alpha.  I was having a hard time tuning the telescope and it may be time for me to take it in for a "tune up" at Lunt Solar Systems.  Again, north is up and west is to the right.

Happy New Year!

Sunspotting

The weather the past few days has been frustrating here at my observatory...very clear skies day and night, with winds gusting on and off to 20 mph.  I am off work this week, and with lots of dark time I have been looking forward to spending some serious observing time with my new (to me) C 11 Edge HD (News Flash!!).  Even though I have already first lighted the telescope, the winds have been driving me crazy!
 
The winds died down, finally, very early this morning and when I went outside to check on conditions for Solar observing saw that high cirrus were beginning to form as a predicted front moves in.  As many observers know, sometimes a very thin layer of cirrus clouds can provide favorable observing conditions for bright targets such as the Sun (or Jupiter)-  I set up my Stellarvue 90mm triplet with Lunt Herschel Prism and sure enough the views of the Sun were quite stable.  While there is virtually no activity in the northern hemisphere, the southern hemisphere had numerous spots stretching in a band within 15 degrees of the equator.  At left is a white light image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory taken this morning.  Clicking on the image will bring it up full size and includes the NOAA active region numbers within which the current sunspots exist.  In addition, there is a scale at lower right to provide a sense of the size of spots relative to the Earth and Jupiter.

Below, is an image I took this morning using my ASI120MC camera.  It is a stack of about 600 individual frames from an avi of 1200.  Considering this was taken through a layer of cirrus, the results are quite nice and compare favorably to the SDO image.  North is up, and west is to the right.  Click the image to enlarge.

KPNO Sunset timelapse

Inspired by several time lapse videos that I have seen of astronomical events, (including this one by Dean Ketelsen made last week) I pieced together my version of the sunset which silhouetted Kitt Peak National Observatory yesterday evening.  See my previous post for more details...and it will look better if you watch it on YouTube and change the setting to 1080 HD...

Post-solstice KPNO sunset

The previous post detailed an annual trip to photograph the Sun setting behind Kitt Peak National Observatory as seen from the Catalina Highway.  As this alignment occurs 3 days prior to the Winter solstice (while the Sun is trekking southward), there is a second opportunity to observe the alignment approximately 3 days following solstice as the Sun is once again passing the same point on the horizon (while trekking northward).

Approximately 10 folks came out yesterday to take pictures of the Kitt Peak ridge line and observatories silhouetted by the Sun. Once again, I was taking pictures of the Sun using my Canon T2i through my Stellarvue 90mm triplet refractor with a Lunt Solar Systems Herschel Prism and a 2x Barlow lens.  This results in a focal ratio of approximately f/14.  Overall, the atmosphere was far less stable than the attempt last week which made focusing quite difficult.  At left is an image of the Sun about 20 minutes prior to sunset.  You can see there are some very nice spots on the disc and compared to the later images below how quickly the seeing (atmospheric stability) would continue to deteriorate.

As last time, here are two images of the Sun as it set behind the National Observatory.  The building that is on the left of the ridge line that appears as a "7" on its side, is the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope.  At far right on the summit is the Mayall 4-meter Telescope.  Click the images to enlarge them to full size.

In addition to the generally poor seeing there was a thick inversion layer that was forming in the valley as temperatures quickly dropped around sunset.  It was easy to see this layer from our vantage point as it developed.  This resulted in a large amount of atmospheric dispersion and some amazing colors of the final bits of the setting Sun.  Below is an image of the nearly set Sun which shows the green rim as well as some blue-

Finally, here is an image at full resolution of the camera of the last fraction of a second of sunset-  The atmospheric dispersion shows colors from orange/yellow at the bottom to blue at the top!  None of this was visible to the eye, as expected, but I was surprised to see this amount of color in the image-  It is not much to look at due to the lack of context in the picture, however, knowing this is the Sun makes it impressive (to me anyway!)

Happy holidays!

Images of the Sun

It has been a few weeks since I had a window of opportunity to image the Sun.  I have had a few visual moments the last few weeks but just enough time to take a look and marvel.  This morning the Sun was ready for me, sporting several nice active regions which included several photogenic spots.  If the atmosphere steadies a bit tomorrow, I may try and take a picture of the individual spots using a barlow lens as they are quite detailed.  Below are the white light (top) and hydrogen alpha (bottom) images of the Sun, taken between 11:00 and 11:20 (18:00 and 18:20 UT)  this morning.  As always, click the images to enlarge them.