A Short Solar Astronomy Session
When I got out of bed yesterday morning, the sun was shining brightly! I can't remember the last time we've seen the sun... maybe someplace out west last month during our train trip?
So, after taking a bunch of medications that I need to take every morning, I started collecting solar astronomy gear to bring out to the deck. The days and nights that are suitable for astronomy in our neck of the woods are severely limited so I need to take advantage of every available moment if my health allows. Fortunately, yesterday morning I was feeling well enough to do an hour or two of solar astronomy. At the very least, I knew that a short burst of adrenaline would carry my flu-ridden body for an hour or two!
I had planned to set up the telescope on the deck so I could stay out of the snow and mud but, unfortunately, the sun is still too low in the sky way up here in the north. When I stepped up on the deck by the time I started moving gear outdoors, the sun was behind the trees. I needed to choose a sunny location in the backyard on our small stone patio so I set up there.
Within an hour or two, the clouds had rolled in again and the sun was behind more trees so it was a very short session. As I was viewing the sun through my camera, I noticed the light was changing on the LCD screen. At first I thought that my camera was screwing up for some reason. I looked up and noticed clouds and the sun was now behind some leafless tree branches. "Uggg... I missed my tiny window of opportunity." I snapped a few photos anyway.
We now have a mildly active sun! We've been going through a dull period of solar activity so seeing sunspots was impossible because there weren't any. We now have one significantly sized sunspot that is easy to see. My seeing yesterday was rather lousy and I still managed to get a few decent photos.
Weather permitting, we should see more and more details on the sun in the next few years. The Sun is on an approximate 11 year cycle. This cycle peaks with solar activity and then transitions into a dull, flat, lifeless surface. This whole cycle takes approximately 11 years.
This first photo shows almost half of our Sun with the sunspot plainly visible. I also added a scaled Earth to this composition... placed next to the sun in scale... the Earth is only 1/109th the size of the sun so it is tiny by comparison. This new sunspot is clearly much larger than Earth...
The rest of the images are full disk images... this first image is in realistic color...
The remainder of the images are in false color. False color is used because it tends to show a bit more detail in various areas depending upon the colors used and the contrast levels. In this case, this was just an exercise in creating false color images since we only have one sunspot to view. It is interesting nonetheless (to me anyway!)...
If my sky conditions were better, I could have captured more detail. By the time I was all setup with my camera attached to my telescope, the clouds had begun to obscure the sun and the sun was already behind some leafless trees. Neither of those conditions helps in capturing detail! That being said, this is the most detail I have ever captured so that is good news.
So, after taking a bunch of medications that I need to take every morning, I started collecting solar astronomy gear to bring out to the deck. The days and nights that are suitable for astronomy in our neck of the woods are severely limited so I need to take advantage of every available moment if my health allows. Fortunately, yesterday morning I was feeling well enough to do an hour or two of solar astronomy. At the very least, I knew that a short burst of adrenaline would carry my flu-ridden body for an hour or two!
I had planned to set up the telescope on the deck so I could stay out of the snow and mud but, unfortunately, the sun is still too low in the sky way up here in the north. When I stepped up on the deck by the time I started moving gear outdoors, the sun was behind the trees. I needed to choose a sunny location in the backyard on our small stone patio so I set up there.
Within an hour or two, the clouds had rolled in again and the sun was behind more trees so it was a very short session. As I was viewing the sun through my camera, I noticed the light was changing on the LCD screen. At first I thought that my camera was screwing up for some reason. I looked up and noticed clouds and the sun was now behind some leafless tree branches. "Uggg... I missed my tiny window of opportunity." I snapped a few photos anyway.
We now have a mildly active sun! We've been going through a dull period of solar activity so seeing sunspots was impossible because there weren't any. We now have one significantly sized sunspot that is easy to see. My seeing yesterday was rather lousy and I still managed to get a few decent photos.
Weather permitting, we should see more and more details on the sun in the next few years. The Sun is on an approximate 11 year cycle. This cycle peaks with solar activity and then transitions into a dull, flat, lifeless surface. This whole cycle takes approximately 11 years.
This first photo shows almost half of our Sun with the sunspot plainly visible. I also added a scaled Earth to this composition... placed next to the sun in scale... the Earth is only 1/109th the size of the sun so it is tiny by comparison. This new sunspot is clearly much larger than Earth...
Here is a close-up of the sunspot and some bubbling granulation. Because of the lousy seeing conditions, this detail would come and go within a second... I'd see it for a second and then it would disappear for a second. I was also contending with strong convection currents from the surface of the Earth due to all the melting snow. This causes a wavy view just like when heat is rising off blacktop... everything in the distance is moving like it is encased in jello. This is what I was experiencing yesterday.
The rest of the images are full disk images... this first image is in realistic color...
The remainder of the images are in false color. False color is used because it tends to show a bit more detail in various areas depending upon the colors used and the contrast levels. In this case, this was just an exercise in creating false color images since we only have one sunspot to view. It is interesting nonetheless (to me anyway!)...
If my sky conditions were better, I could have captured more detail. By the time I was all setup with my camera attached to my telescope, the clouds had begun to obscure the sun and the sun was already behind some leafless trees. Neither of those conditions helps in capturing detail! That being said, this is the most detail I have ever captured so that is good news.
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