Thursday 17 June 2021
Today's prominences.
Wednesday 16 June 2021
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.
Thursday 10 June 2021
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.
Tuesday 8 June 2021
Let the Hydrogen - alpha experiment begin.
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!
Friday 14 May 2021
"Can you speak Venusian"
An amazing array of astronomical eccentrics.
Or "Independent thinkers", as Sir Patrick Moore used to call them.
Wednesday 12 May 2021
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.
Tuesday 11 May 2021
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.
The French Scorpion.
Last night we camped in the village of Sereilhac, some maybe 20 miles south west of Limoges. The temperature all day hovered around 30°C ! ...
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Today's Sol image revealed a beautiful snake like filament . It got me thinking... How long is that filament? With the help of the lapt...
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This year's Christmas tree The roaring winds dropped, the clouds parted and the night of Christmas day was cloaked in the light of the...
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Took a spin to Newgale today, we haven't been for ages, at least not since the pandemic. It was wonderful to see the vast stretch of be...