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.