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 !