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