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Archive for the 'Pics' Category
Observing Report 12th July 2012 (Sunspots)
Thursday morning was surprisingly clear and sunny - an odd period sandwiched between countless hours of incessant rain. I managed about half an hour of solar observing before it all went claggy. The seeing wasn't that good but I managed to get fair views of Active Region 1520 and its satellites. Apologies now for the poor-quality images, I might have another bash at the stacking to see if I can get the noise levels down a bit without losing any detail:
Active Regions 1519 - 1521 (12/07/2012).
50/6000 stacked frames.
DMK mono CCD camera with 2x Powermate on the C80ED-R.
Baader Planetarium AstroSolar™ Safety Film (ND 5.0) with #58 Green and IR-cut filters.
The largest spots in AR1520 are even bigger than those in AR1504 which I imaged last month!
Tall stories
There was an interesting story in The Telegraph yesterday - the fur's flying over accusations of folk Photoshopping their pics with the intent of "proving" that they topped-out on Everest.
I never felt the need to cheat in such a manner. After stopping for a beer some way short of the top I dozed off, and when I awoke I found that the support team had gone home so I never quite reached the summit.
Don't believe me? Here's a photo to prove it:
Not to scale.
Observing Report 19th June 2012 (Sunspots)
Yesterday the clouds parted for longer than expected so I nipped out to get some pics of the group of active regions that are about to go out of sight behind the Sun's limb. The seeing was surprisingly good which allowed a fair bit of detail to be captured:
Active Regions 1504 - 1507 (19/06/2012).
300/3000 stacked frames.
DMK mono CCD camera on the C80ED-R.
Baader Planetarium AstroSolar™ Safety Film (ND 5.0) and #58 Green filter.
To give you some idea of the size of these things, the dark core of that largest sunspot in the AR1504 group is twice as big as our planet.
It's making me feel quite insignificant.
Observing Report 6th June 2012 (Transit of Venus)
Late last night I went up Croft Hill to get ready to observe the 2012 Transit of Venus. I managed to get all the kit up there in one haul and was soon sitting in the pop-up shelter and looking at the thick low clouds that stretched across all of the sky. The forecast of rain was wrong but they got the cloud-cover about right, things weren't looking good. Still, it was a good place to be - almost 360-degrees of visible horizon and I had them all to myself, apart from the rabbits and the foxes which came surprisingly close to the shelter. And it was warm, almost tee-shirt weather. With a couple of hours to go until sunrise I grabbed some shut-eye, hopeful that the cloud would clear before the celestial performance began.
Of course, when the sun broke the horizon at 04:45 I couldn't see it due to the 8/8 cloud cover. I set up the kit anyway and waited for nearly an hour before the cloud started to break. It cleared overhead but the trailing edge of the pall was still making its way slowly towards the north-east where all the action was going on unseen. It was going to be a close-run thing - would the clouds clear the sun before Venus did? The critical time was 05:53 - "Fourth Contact". After that the show would be over.
The clouds refused to part but there was a reasonable thinning in just the right place at 05:49 so I stated to rattle off frames like a madman for the next four minutes, continuing even after the thinning had closed up. Talk about cutting it fine!
And then it was over. I went up to the trig-point for a brew and a smoke, it took me a while to notice that the sky was almost clear and all around was bathed in sunlight. Typical.
I was soon hauling the kit back to the car, cursing the weather. I cursed all the way home and cursed even more when I first looked at the pics on the laptop. It took me ages to realised that I did actually have four really poor frames which showed Venus crossing the Sun's limb.
Those four frames were dim and noisy but I've managed to drag this piss-poor result out of them:
Transit of Venus 06/06/2012 @ 05:49 BST - Venus crossing the upper-right section of limb.
Nikon D50 with 2x Powermate on the C80ED-R.
Baader Planetarium AstroSolar™ Safety Film (neutral density 5.0).
Hand-held shot, 1/100s exposure @ ISO200.
And plenty of clouds.
This has to be the worst solar image I'll ever post but I suppose it's better than nothing.
Although Croft Hill SSSI has well-trodden footpaths and access is encouraged, the land is privately-owned and permission to be there "out-of-hours" or for "irregular purposes" should be sought. My thanks go to Phil Jackson (Biodiversity and Restoration Advisor (North), Aggregate Industries) for granting me permission to access Croft Hill for this observing session.
