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,

Mars 2020 apparition... A few drawings.

The 2020 Mars apparition has so far  been a bit tricky.  Many nights of bad seeing, and lots of cloudy evenings. 

On the whole I have only been able to capture the odd evening of Mars viewing. 

But those evenings you see above, more than made up for the lousy weather.

Mars on a typewriter

 

Welcome back Mars.

August 9th 2020 : 04h00mUT 76mm O.G. x112 Antoniadi I

Early this morning the world of John Carter, Tharks, Synthetic men and dreamers finally came back to life.

It has been a long wait, at least four years since I last had a decent glimpse of this most wonderful and enchanting of planets.

My 76mm refractor revealed with ease the white bright polar caps, the gibbous planetary phase, a hint of Mare Sirenum, and most interestingly a whisper of light over two small areas of the Tharsis region.

To my mind one of those small light areas might be connected to nearby Mons Olympus, the highest volcano on the martian surface.
Was I seeing the Nix Olympus "The Snows of Olympus"?

I made a quick sketch, said hello to John Carter, and dreamed the astronomer's dream, for maybe another half hour.
The night was now fast giving way to the day, I slowly packed away the telescope, and made a few notes.

This was my first observation of the 2020/21 apparition, the planet was 15.6 arc seconds in diameter.
From now until October, Mars is just going to increase in size.

The next few months are going to be exciting.

Welcome back Mars, you have been sorely missed.

Clear Martian skies

Mark.

It is a Beautiful Cosmos.

Yes, it is a most Beautiful Cosmos.

Ivor Cutler's songs and poems...Brilliant!

Time to move on.

"Perky" the Perkins engined camper van

Looks like this little beauty will be up for sale soon!

It's been a great little camper, but now it's time someone else made some memories with her.

She has served us well, never breaking down, always starting first time.

In the nearly two years that we have owned her, she has only required a new exhaust box and pipe.

Though she does have what I call "progressive" steering -  it does wander slightly!

Also no power steering, sluggish turning at slow speed and no turbo means she is really bad at going up steep hills.

There are one or two hills around here I wouldn't even contemplate.

In camper van terminology, she is "getting on a bit".    


We will be sorry to see her go, but she leaves us with many happy memories:

Analogue Haiku

I found some of my analogue 5-7-5 haiku poems.

Thought I would put them on the blog.

These haiku were written sometime over the past four years.

It not only rained all day.. It rained for about three months solid!

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Nothing beats a woodburning fire. 

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Sitting on a park bench, lovely view that day, bees buzzing, Sun shining, perfect.

Though we would have enjoyed it a bit more if not for the lingering faint smell of warm sun dried dog crap!  

Ahh the joys of a British Summer down on the beach.

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Photo taken on Selsey Beach, West Sussex. Beautiful day.

Mr Cormorant happily sits and ponders the Universe.

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Analogue vs Digital.

A typical analogue Haiku capture device.

Computers love them or Hate them, they are here to stay.

I love the computer, I hate the computer, I don't want a computer, I need a computer!!

Never happy with the digital, always a niggling in the back of the mind that I'm being conned into accepting the tablets, iphones, WiFi, Internet etc.

I realise I'm being a hypocrite, for here I am typing away on a laptop, and posting on a blog.

No matter... I use the computer like I use a car. It gets me from A to B.

But a typewriter is a whole different machine. 

Those old analogue type machines have a life of their own.

Clunky keys, smooth keys, no electric or batteries required. 

Always ready to type, low maintenance, plus they can withstand lots of key bashing. 

Plus, if you happen to tip a whole mug of tea over a typewriter it will more than likely continue to happily punch out words.  Try that with a laptop, and you can guess what would happen!.

The laptop I write on will probably last a couple of years, if I look after it!

My old "Baby Empire" typewriter on the other hand is already 83 years old and still going strong.

Is the climate changing?

An entry from one of my favourite astronomy books "The Stars Night by Night" by Joseph H. Elgie.

This is his journal entry for May 1st 1907!  113 years ago to the day....WOW!

Climate change concern has been around for longer than I thought !


Also note how climate change was apparently an "old, old question" even back in 1907 !

Henry Hatfield's Spectrohelioscope - 1985

I love this whole video, from the subject matter, to the pace of Henry Hatfield's delivery, a classic.

Thank you to the amateur astronomer Martin Mobberley for putting this video on YouTube.

N.B. If you ever want to read a great biography about the late great Sir Patrick Moore, Martin has written the definitive story of his life. (two volumes)
www.amazon.co.uk/Martin-Mobberley

Well worth reading.

Trawling the old photos

Staying at home for obvious reasons at the moment, with plenty of time on my hands to trawl through some old astronomy pictures and sketches.

Over the next few days/weeks/Months! I will put on several posts of bygone astro images.

Here are a few to start with:

Above photo showing the projection method of observing the Sun. 

The telescope used was a 6 inch Tal2 reflector, a great white light solar scope. 

Also really good for observing Saturn.

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Notice the four distinct craters along the terminator between the five and six o'clock positions:

Crater names: from left to right: Furnerius, Petavius, Vendelinus, Langrenus  (the chain of four).

Best seen around third day after a New Moon.

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Above photo taken at a friends smallholding, some five years ago.. I think! 

I wrote an Englyn poem to compliment the photo.

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Final image, a sunspot picture I took, using my trusty old Tal1 reflector. 

It may have only been a 4 inch reflector, but it delivered some beautiful views of the Sun (with proper filters fitted.) 

Plus some great views of Mars at opposition.

Sadly though, this telescope was not much use for observing Jupiter. 

Clear Skies, Stay safe.