Mr Blue Sky is back.

Finally after nearly two months of cloud, rain, and winter gales... the blue sky reappears.

Been going slightly mad waiting for the blue sky return.  

Thankfully this morning the clouds evaporated, the Sun shone with Winter bright, and the sky was washed once again with heart warming blue.

Managed to see a couple of prominences and filaments on old Sol, plus a train of several sunspot groups.

To really round off this bluest of days, I managed to photograph the Moon as it was rising over the trig point of our nearest mountain, the Frenni Fawr.

A  good day for Sol and Selene,  and as I write this, it isn't even dark yet.

Hopefully clear skies tonight.

Thank you blue sky Pembrokeshire weather... clouds gone... all recent bad weather is forgiven.

November rain stop play.

Not much stargazing for me this past November!

Out of the thirty nights of possible November clear skies, only nine were clear enough for any actual observing.

Out of those nine evenings only three were all night clear!

It's a pity, as November can be one of the best months for observing, at least form here in Pembrokeshire.

In the past I've had many excellent solar and planetary observing sessions in this month of the bonfire and Leonid.

Lets hope the night skies of December are kinder.

The Bortle scale.

Interesting. 

I will be checking out the condition of my local night sky over the next few days.

It was not looking good last night,I could only see three stars in Ursa Minor!

Will keep a look out for M31, as and when the weather allows.

Wikipedia Bortle Scale Link

White light imaging.

Clear sky this morning, though clouds quickly moved in about 10.00 a.m.

Managed to capture a couple of solar images with the 90mm Maksutov, mounted on the sturdy eq3 mount. 

Makes a big stability difference when the telescope weighs less than the mount!

The images were taken with our old Nikon D70. An old camera by modern standards, but it still does the job fairly well. 

When I consider my first "astronomy" digital camera was a 1.3mp fixed lens two AA battery compact, then the D70 will more than keep me happy - for now.

Visually the Active Region 2882 stood out really well through the tiny Maksutov.

 

AR2882

With a 25mm eyepiece the sunspot grouping could easily be seen and was bigger than expected.

I haven't taken any white light images for ages, mostly I've been lost in Ha light these past few months.

Sol imaging: 22nd August 2021

 

  

 16h 15m UT -40mm PST/Samsung S6

 

I've not seen old Sol for going on nearly a week!  Lots of slow moving clouds had put pay to any observations.

This afternoon the blue skies prevailed and I was able to capture a few images.

 

I wanted to give an impression of the full solar disc and also capture the several small prominences that were visible.  

After a bit of fiddling with an image I settled on the picture you see here. 

 

 

Not the best image; that is obvious, but it does clearly show several of the prominences and their positions.

 

The white dots seen on the surface are some processing artefacts I couldn't delete.   

The program used to process the images is GIMP 2.8

Imaging and photo processing does not come easy to me, I would prefer pencil and paper, but today I thought I would try my hand at a bit of digital photo editing.  

Here's the final Ha Sol image capture:

 

First clear Sol image for a week.

Wow... it's been a week since I was last able to image the Sun! 

The weather these past seven days has mostly been rainy and cloudy. 

Or alternatively cloudy and rainy, depending on how you look at it!  

This afternoon the Sun came out, and all was forgiven in an instant.

I took my time observing those two beautiful prominences. 

They were so delicate, wonderfully tenuous, definitely ethereal.  

Clear Sol Skies 

Today's solar activity - 30/06/21

Plenty of solar action this morning, AR 2835 has a wonderful plage display snaking its way around the region. 

Also there are a few filaments, which can be just seen in the pictures, but easily spotted with the naked eye.

The Sun here is hot today, though nowhere near as hot as in some parts of the world.  

My thoughts are with  the people of the Pacific North West, who are experiencing temperatures as high as 46 Celsius at the moment !  

June 22nd 2021 Hydrogen Alpha light.

 

A couple of prominences today, plus a very noticeable long filament, with sunspot group 2833 close by. 

Seeing not good, and overall solar contrast low.

Difficult to pull out any detail with the IrfanView software.

Summer Solstice in hydrogen alpha.

 

I had a quick sol peep this morning, but not much prominence activity, as the above picture shows. 

Skies were pretty well clouded out for the whole day.

Did manage to spot a lovely dark filament, though unfortunately failed to capture it on the camera. 

Maybe tomorrow I will have better seeing conditions..... you can't win them all   :-) 

Happy Solstice...

Today's prominences.

Blue skies, fledgling sparrows chirping, hot concrete underfoot, a perfect day for soaking up the hydrogen alpha light.

Those sparrows aren't half noisy at the moment!  A Harley Davidson just thundered by... one day !

Through the white light filter AR2833 stands out beautifully; it looks like a tiny island surrounded by a vast ocean of clear cool water. 

Through the Ha filter AR2833 looks like an island surrounded by seething magma seas, swirling  fire storms, and  violent hurricanes.... Which I guess it is. :-) 

Bare warm feet on Sun drenched concrete.. you don't get that observing in the night time !

  

Tweaking the hydrogen light.

Out of the past ten days, I've managed to observe for five days. Which isn't bad considering the cloud cover so far this month.

This past week I've spent most of my observing time fine tuning the PST's etalon, and also importantly  looking for that "sweet spot" in the telescopes field of view.

Glad to say, that after much tweaking and head scratching , the etalon positioning and "sweet spot" have now been sorted out.

What started off as a red bland blob with a little indistinct prominence poking out of it a week ago, has now been transformed into a seething mass of prominences, filaments, plages, sunspots, and spicules.

The PST is a wonderful little solar scope, I admit it requires some etalon and sweet spot tweaking for best results, for me that is part of this little telescopes charm. 

A mobile view of the partial solar eclipse.

A misty start to the day, with a steady drizzle of Atlantic rain..!  

It looked as if we had no chance of seeing the partial eclipse. 

Too many clouds in our village, we decided to go mobile.

Telescope, tripod and camera at the ready we headed off towards our local town of Cardigan.

A slight detour had us passing through the village of Boncath, where luckily the Sun was peeking through the mist.

In all, we were able to capture maybe ten images, in a one minute solar viewing gap.

Then old Sol was once again obscured by mist.

Luckily the gap in the cloud coincided closely with the maximum eclipse phase. 

Sol and Luna looked great together, dancing in the misty filtered sky.

Let the Hydrogen - alpha experiment begin.

After nearly a twenty year wait, I finally get my hands on a hydrogen alpha telescope.

It's going to take a bit of fiddling and tweaking to get a decent image, but so far so good.

I managed to take a few very basic afocal camera shots today, crude but with promise!

Also, this daytime solar astronomy lark is handy for topping up the vitamin D levels!

"Can you speak Venusian"

An amazing array of astronomical eccentrics. 

Or "Independent thinkers", as Sir Patrick Moore used to call them.

Well worth watching on a cloudy evening.

Astronomy typed memories from 2006

 

I well remember taking these observations, the telescope used was a tiny 40mm refractor. 

Even though the telescope was really a toy, it still returned some lovely images of the lunar surface.

Sunspots AR2822 and AR2823.

A quick solar capture from this morning's observing session.  

The Nikon D70 and the Tal1 refractor are a good combination. 

Great to see such a prominent grouping, in the form of AR2822. 

The Story of Palomar, 1948

Highlights from SOHO's 25 Years in Space.

Beautiful images from the SOHO satellite.

Learn more about this amazing satellite in these links:

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/soho/in-depth/

https://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/

Weather satellite image - 18/02/21

 

Clear skies this morning, with looming cloud on horizon. 

A bit warmer than last week, but still wooly hat weather.

Weather satellite images - 03/02/21

Mostly blue skies here, bit cold, Sun shining brightly, gibbous waning Moon in the west.

Beautiful February morning.

Weather satellite image: 02/02/21.

Looks like most of the UK is hidden under a veil of cloud this morning. 

Though parts of Mediterranean coastline look fairly cloud free. 

Not a bad image considering the weather satellite camera is some 530 miles above our heads!

Weather satellite image. 30/01/21.

This mornings weather fax. 

Downloaded from the NOAA 18 weather satellite, via my ham radio and decoded with weather data decoding software.

Pembrokeshire looks clearish this morning.

Clouds moving in from the east, bringing cold weather,