Latest Posts

20240719 - Solex

One of the joys of Caravanning is that you have the opportunity (in moderation) to take on your holiday the things that you enjoy doing at home. After a pretty awful summer in the UK, I ventured off to France with my faithful SVBony 80 F7 refractor, EQ5 mount and my Sol'Ex. Although I managed to do a white light spot count most days (main exceptions were due to travel), I only managed to get the Sol'Ex out once. I have realised that it takes a little time to get the best out of the Sol'Ex and I am still very much a novice.

So, 4 images at Ha and this was the best of the bunch.

 

I have to admit that I really like this image, one of the best that I have ever produced, sharp and well detailed with a great deal of information on display.. Hydrogen Alpha (Ha) Images highlight activity in the Solar Corona, the local atmosphere above the visible disk of the Sun.

I have annotated the image with Arrows pointing to the most significant Active Regions. As you can see, there is a great deal going on. The darker lines and shapes on the 'surface' of the sun are filaments - loops or curtains of plasma rising above the true surface.. They appear darker because they are cooler than the surface underneath.  When these structure rise above the periphery of the sun, they are known as prominences. As an indication of size, the large object to the South West is probably about 1.5x Earth diameter and is certainly not a large prominence.

AR3751, has a bright white area. This is probably a solar flare building. A M2 class Solar flare erupted at 17:53 UTC from this particular AR. M series flares are considered to be of moderate strength. AR3759 also has a hot spot although there was no report of Solar flares on this day or the next from this AR.

The Active Regions are local areas on the surface of the sun and are normally, but not always, associated with Sunspots. The numbers are assigned by the WORLD DATA CENTER FOR SOLAR-TERRESTRIAL PHYSICS, Boulder, Colorado.

For more information on Solar Activity on this day, follow this link to Spaceweatherlive: https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/archive/2024/07/20/xray.html

When an image is processed by the JSolex app, a number of additional images are also created, interim images during the processing phase plus other en-product images.

This is  a Stonyhurst disk, underlaid with the mono (non-colourised) solar disk.

Note that the program takes into account the date, time and location to calculate the Solar parameters to ensure that the overlay is accurate.

Updated:2024-10-09

 

 

Sun 20240620

Seeing was not too bad this morning. Not brilliant and this is demonstrated by a certain amount of fuzziness in some of the images. 

The higher magnification images were achieved with the standard setup but with and additional Baader Modular Barlow lens.

 

 

Fairly pleased with this. It appears as good as the Spaceweather image for the same day but shows the boundary of the Active Regions much better. One of the benefits of avoiding false colourisation/ AR 3719 and AR3720 out on the Eastern Limb. Good granulation visible as well

.

AR 3713 and AR 3712. Two complex groups traversing the photosphere. West is to the right which in astronomical convention, points to the earths western horizon. Active regions always show up more clearly on the limb of the sun..

AAR3716. Not looking quite as good when imaged through the Baader barlow lens. Nothing wrong with the Baader, it is is simply the movement of the earths atmosphere causing the photons to wander.. AR3716 is in the northern hemisphere, just above AR3713.

 

Finally, AR3713.  The shape of the umbra (the black bit, it is surrounded by a grey penumbra) in the top right hand spot is very unusual. A very fragmented and disparate/complex group.

20240620 - Solex

I am still trying to get to grips with my Sol'ex and still making some fairly fundamental mistakes. Focussing, particularly at the UV end of the spectrum is very tricky. The image is quite dim on the screen and to maintain the 10mS maximum exposure time, a certain amount of camera gain is required. This adds noise which can compound the focussing problems.

Nonetheless, a couple of nice images while on holiday in Cromer.

The Sun in Hydrogen Alpha (Ha). A little bit underexposed and the spicules are not as clear as they could be. A very large (long) filament clearly visible. Sunspots can be seen through the chromosphere on the surface of the photosphere,

This image in Calcium H at the UV end of the spectrum. The active regions are much more clearly defined, spicules (the large granulation) are visible and the larger sunspots are also visible. AR 3712 is at the lower right with AR 3713 just above. AR 3716 is above and slightly to the right again. West (astronomical convention) is to the right and North upwards.

Compare with the WL image of the photosphere here: https://www.spaceweather.com/images2024/20jun24/hmi1898.gif

This image is in Calcium K, further into the UV end of the spectrum. Apart from the fact I inadvertently cropped the bottom of the image, this is very similar to the Calcium H image above. Calcium K accentuates the spicules and active regions even more, look at the NW  and NE sections of the hemisphere where the difference is clearer to see. The downside is that it is more difficult to focus and position the image on the PC screen.

2024-06-20 10:05 - 010:50 UTC
60mm F4 Refractor stopped down to 36mm
ND9 filter to reduce light and heat intensity
Sol'ex spectroheliograph
EQ5 plus RA Drive
ZWO ASI178MM Camera

Processed SharpCap4.1, jSolex
(c) Martyn Kinder 2024

 

20240621 - Solex

Although  I tried to image in Ha and CaH/K this morning, however, only the Ha images were successful. The Ca images were rendered useless as focus was not sharp enough and the images also became slightly distorted for some unknown reason. Need to concentrate a bit more prepping for imaging.

This is not a bad image all things considered. Active regions are clearly defined and that huge filament and others are very clear. Not much in the way of prominences though.

2024-06-21 10:08UTC
60mm F4 Refractor stopped down to 36mm
ND9 filter to reduce light and heat intensity
Sol'ex spectroheliograph
EQ5 plus RA Drive
ZWO ASI178MM Camera

Processed SharpCap4.1, jSolex
(c) Martyn Kinder 2024

Page 2 of 3