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Showing posts with the label sun

A Beautiful Afternoon for Solar Astronomy

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Y esterday afternoon was a little chilly but a beautiful afternoon for solar astronomy.  The sky was a deep blue, the distant mountaintops were crisp with no haze diminishing my view, and the temperature was a balmy 20° or so.  It was a great opportunity to spend a little more time with this new solar filter. I set up everything indoors and then moved everything to our mudroom/laundry room at the back door to make it easier moving everything outdoors.  I knew I wanted to attempt to capture some photos so I also had two cameras ready as well as a few lens choices.   You can clearly see in this first photo that it was a beautiful afternoon.  I don't think I've seen skies this clear in years! I was able to set up the telescope in an area where I had cleared snow the previous night.  This area of the backyard is very near our outdoor kitchen and the back door to the house so I had easy access to any additional equipment I might need from indoors.   Although it was a relatively mode

Solar Imaging

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W ith the frigid temperatures outside being down in the single digits and sub-zero range everyday, I've been trying to keep busy indoors.  Of course, by saying "I've been trying to keep busy" I am referring to keeping busy in the little bit of spare time I have between health issues, daily physical therapy, daily piano practice, and down time.  Still, I like to accomplish something and learn something each day regardless of whether it is a good health day or bad health day.   The windy frigid temperatures have kept me indoors.  I don't even like going outside to get the mail in this weather so Sheila does that most days!  As I've written in this blog often, my health fares quite poorly in warmer environments (in the 80s and above) but I've been very sensitive to cold environments also as I approach 60 years old (in a few months, in case anyone wants to know).  I simply have zero tolerance for cold environments now.  (Watching the grandkids at the ice rink

Smoke Filled Skies

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F or the past couple of weeks, it has been very rainy and very humid.  On the occasional day of some partial sun, the sun has been mostly obscured by California wildfire smoke.  When I awoke this morning at 6am, I looked out the window to see this...   The sun was barely illuminating our neighborhood through an eerie yellowish, hazy smoke.  More often than not, we are shrouded in dense fog in the mornings but the fog on any other normal day is a neutral gray color.  We now have an eerie yellowish haze almost constantly this summer.  It is mostly noticeable in the early mornings and early evenings when the sun is low but the haze is also quite visible on the rare midday sunny day because it noticeably cuts down on visibility.  I can't put my finger on it but this smoke just appears different than typical haze.   The moon was shrouded in this yellowish, hazy smoke last night too.  I didn't get a photo of it though.  I was feeling rather lousy last night so I had no desire to grab

Solar Observing

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A few days ago, while still recovering from mast cell symptoms, the sun had peaked through the clouds so I grabbed a lightweight telescope with a solar filter and headed outside.   I wasn't feeling well enough to do any solar imaging (that can get complicated and involves a lot more gear...  as well as a clear head) so I just grabbed one of my lightest scopes which happens to be my lowest quality scope too.  Even though this was my lowest quality scope, I knew it would be good enough for a few quick views of the sun.  Besides, it was still mostly cloudy and the sun was just peaking out in between clouds.  I knew the solar observing would be short-lived on this day so it would have been a waste to use up energy on my better, heavier and bulkier astronomy gear. The moment I peered through the telescope, I realized that the sky conditions were lousy too.  I hadn't noticed it before but it was hazy and the sun was veiled in thin clouds that I could see passing in front of the sun. 

Lukey's Astrophotography

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This morning, the sun was shining brightly and the sky was cloudless with good visibility so I asked Lukey if he wanted to look at the sun for a little while.  After we set up the telescope and all the associated gear for solar astronomy, we found the sun in the telescope.  We talked a little bit about sunspots, what they are and why there are none visible today.  I explained that we're in the middle of the 11 year solar cycle which is the long period of relatively little activity on the sun.   Since there wasn't much to look at and discuss, we then we swapped out the eyepiece for one of my cameras so Lukey could shoot a few photos... Lukey picked up the remote shutter release and shot his first astrophotography images... He shot just two photos but they came out very nicely!   They were both the same so I'm only sharing one of them here.   The seeing was good this particular morning so we were able to capture some faint hints of the convection cells bubbling to the surface

Missed Mercury Transit

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Once again, living in Waterbury has proven to be an absolutely miserable geographic choice for viewing anything in the sky other than clouds.  I'm certain that we must see less sky throughout the year than people in rainy Seattle.  As a result of snowy weather, I missed the last planetary solar transit that I will be able to see in my lifetime.  To say that I am disappointed is a wild understatement. This past Monday morning, Mercury passed in front of the sun.  This doesn't happen all that often.  The next time we will have an opportunity to watch this event will be in 2032...  but, not from the United States.  Unfortunately, during this event this past Monday, we had snow falling out of the sky here in Waterbury during the entire six hour event. I spent a lot of time planning for this astronomical event.  I spent a lot of time and energy ensuring all my gear is ready to go.  I planned how I wanted to image and video the event too.  I even built some new gear just for this

Our Sun

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I took a break from packing for our train trip to do some solar observing and imagery.  It is sunny and relatively warm today (in the 30s) so I wanted to get outside for a little bit.  This also gave me a chance to test my homemade solar finderscope while mounted on my telescope.  The finderscope worked fine which made easy work of finding the sun.  There is still so much snow out there that the sun was blinding in the bright sunlight!  I couldn't see a thing on my camera when I mounted it on the telescope.  It was difficult getting my settings correct and then it was difficult seeing well enough to focus.  I managed to capture a pretty good image of the sun though.  Although I captured a sunspot on our sun today, we're actually in a lull lately for solar activity.  We won't hit peak in solar activity again until 2024 if I remember correctly.  Last summer was exceptionally dull with absolutely no details seen on the surface of the sun when viewing in white light.  Now,

An Eclipse Near Miss

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I haven't written anything here in quite some time. Well...  quite some time for me. Unfortunately, I'm still struggling with getting my health back to a stable place and I've been feeling so miserable that finding the right words and staying focused on what I am attempting to write is difficult. Staying on topic and staying focused on any task is almost impossible but I'm also having difficulty writing in a positive way so I've actually been avoiding writing here. You'll see what I mean as you continue reading this blog entry...  We went up to Stowe to meet up with some friends almost three weeks ago... I can't believe that was almost three weeks ago. It seems like last weekend! We had a great time and it was really  nice getting out of the house for a change but I felt quite lousy within an hour of being out. My health only worsened over the next few hours during dinner... pain, nausea and overwhelming fatigue... and now, even though I thought I was fin

Some Solar Astronomy

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My health is still recovering from the problems I had Saturday but I felt like dragging a telescope out to the front deck to observe the sun this morning. It doesn't require a whole lot of energy to peer through a telescope but I do need to be careful out in the sun or I'll end up with failing health again. I definitely don't have the energy nor is my head clear enough to attempt any home improvement/repair projects so I will probably bounce between the piano and the telescope all morning. It is a bit hazy again today so the viewing isn't great but it is better than the clouds and rain we've had for the past week or longer. At least the sun is shining! Up until today, all my astrophotography has been done using my Sony a6000 with its 1.5x crop sensor. This morning, however, I decided to give my full frame Sony a7 a shot... My Sony a7 worked just fine. This camera will give me a slightly wider view but also should provide smoother gradients and simply bette

Successful Rebuild and Upgrades

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The upgraded Celestron 70mm telescope.           I've already written a few times about rebuilding this particular little telescope but I added another part recently so it is worth writing about again.  As purchased, this scope was a hunk of junk. Celestron should be embarrassed by all their sub-$400 telescope packages because they are all worthless as sold. I suspect a lot of people end up getting turned off to astronomy as a result of being disappointed by purchasing a lousy, frustrating telescope. Only the very determined will continue this hobby after becoming frustrated beyond belief. I bought a Celestron 114EQ for our son a number of years ago. We quickly realized that this particular scope was not ideal for a beginner and we never got any decent views out of it so, the next Christmas, I purchased a simpler Celestron 70AZ. This telescope wasn't much better than the 114EQ but I felt it had potential for various reasons not worth explaining here.  This telescope

Observing the Sun

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Observing on our deck. The past few days have been sunny so I've spent these past few days observing our Sun.  Observing our Sun through a telescope is something I never thought much about doing but various conditions at night have temporarily moved me away from nighttime viewing and toward viewing the sky during the day. My images of the Sun that I have been observing have been sharp and crisp but I've been a bit perplexed about why I'm not seeing any sort of detail. I'm just seeing a bright sphere in the sky with no detail whatsoever. The edges of the sphere are crisp but I'm seeing no detail on the surface of the disk no matter which way I attempt to turn the focus knobs. There are various ways to view the Sun and each way will show only a certain band of frequencies of light. I'm delving into solar astronomy at the budget end of the spectrum so I have been observing our Sun in white light. In this wavelength, I should be able to see sunspots, gr

Another Morning of Observing the Sun

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I've been waiting for the past week for another good day to observe the sun so I could try my hand at solar astrophotography yet again. This morning was finally a good morning to set up my telescope on the deck so I started moving gear to the deck early this morning. While waiting for two new solar filters to arrive and for the weather to be more suitable for astronomy, I've been doing a lot of research about our sun. I actually learned quite bit... some of it even a bit frightening... but I'll save that info for another blog entry which will be written solely for that particular topic. Last week, when I tried my initial attempt at solar astrophotography, I was left feeling a bit disappointed and later found that adding two additional filters to my telescope would allow me to capture more detail. Unfortunately, I'm still waiting on one of these filters to arrive but I did have one of the filters to use this morning. So, if I could see just a little bit more detai

Full Moon and Solar Setup

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Sony a6000, Canon 400mm f5.6 L lens               First, while my dislocated thumb heals I'm limited in what I can get accomplished around the house so I wanted to write a little bit about a photo of the full moon that I shot a few months ago.  I belong to a few different astrophotography and astronomy groups and someone was asking about lenses for photographing the moon so I helped them out with a few tips. Afterward, I got to thinking that the info I shared with that astronomy group would probably be good to share here too.  The main reason for the request for help was to help the person choose a lens that would be good for photographing the moon. For this type of photography, most people recommend a 70-300mm lens but I've never been happy shooting with a standard 70-300mm lens. That being said, I have managed to get a few decent shots over the years using a 70-300mm lens on a smaller 4/3-sized sensor. The advantage of the smaller sensor is it doubles the equivalent