A Solar Astronomy Session with Lukey
Because of trees around our house, I have only a relatively short window of opportunity the first thing in the morning and then a relatively short window of opportunity in the early afternoon for solar astronomy. Two short windows of opportunity are better than no windows of opportunity though. The sun would be behind trees all the rest of the time. I chose to set up for solar astronomy first thing in the morning before Lukey and Kenzie even arrived at the house.
I knew that if I waited for early afternoon, then I'd likely have to contend with wind. When it comes to astronomy, wind can be as limiting as clouds so I knew that my chances of a good session were during that early morning window of opportunity. The wind usually picks up by late morning and wind will vibrate the telescopes which makes viewing very difficult because your view through the vibrating telescope will be bouncing all over the place. Additionally, wind at the surface often means higher winds aloft which causes a turbulent atmosphere. A turbulent atmosphere causes shifting blurriness of your views. Whatever you are viewing will appear to go in and out-of-focus. Sometimes, if the turbulence is bad, you won't even get moments of in-focus crispness. You will only see different levels of out-of-focus blurriness. It is not that wind is visible but wind causes warm air and cold air to tumble and roll creating views that are similar to looking across a very large blacktop parking lot on a hot day. I preferred to take advantage of the still of early morning. The cycle of evaporation as the sun warms up the environment doesn't help either so I wanted to get set up for solar astronomy as early as possible.
As Lukey and Kenzie pulled up to the house a little before 8am, I was just finishing up setting up the telescopes. The timing was almost perfect. I figured we could observe the sun for an hour or so, put everything away, and then head inside for some french toast.
I decided to set up two telescopes, side-by-side, on the same tracking mount. Using a tracking mount would make observing the sun far easier. I would not need to constantly nudge the telescopes to keep the sun in our view. The mount would track the sun as the Earth rotated and this would keep the sun centered in our field of view.
I set up two telescopes so that one telescope could view the full disk of the sun in white light which would be viewing the sun's photosphere. The photosphere is the topmost layer of the sun. Sunspots would be very prevalent here. Another telescope would be viewing the sun in the Hydrogen Alpha wavelength (Ha wavelength) which shows the far more visibly dynamic and violent chromosphere of the sun. In the Ha wavelength we could watch the bubbling plasma of the chromosphere slowly change over minutes. Around the outer limb of the sun, we could observe prominences of molten plasma shoot tens of thousands of kilometers above the surface of the chromosphere (equivalent to the distance of multiple diameters of the Earth). These prominences would slowly change shape over the course of minutes too.
Once everything was set up, it was time to initialize the mount and have the mount slew to the sun. Then I could center the sun and let the mount track on its own. I could use the hand-controller to accurately point the telescopes to different areas of the sun too.
When I selected the sun in the Navigation menu of the hand-controller, I showed Lukey the warning message advising us that pointing at the sun is dangerous. I methodically then pointed to all the solar filters we were using on each telescope that would make this safe. Once we were confident that we were safe to view the sun, I used the hand-controller to tell the mount to go ahead and slew to the sun.
The mount whirred into action and slewed toward the sun. Lukey exclaimed, "Wow... this is so cool!"
When the mount stopped slewing, I centered the sun in our field of view and then focused each of the telescopes. The first views of the sun on this morning were looking spectacular! Lukey then stepped up on a small stool and took his first look of the day at the sun. It had been a couple of years since he last had an opportunity to observe the sun with me.
As Lukey was looking through the telescopes, we talked about the different features that are visible, what those features actually are and what they would compare to here on Earth in our everyday life. The comparisons were mostly so he could better understand the immense scale of the sun but also so he could get a better idea of what each solar term means. For instance, those little prominences we were watching shoot out from the outer limb of the sun are like boiling lava spraying out from a volcano for tens of thousands of miles into the sky. I also explained that the white light telescope was showing the topmost layer of the sun and that the Ha telescope was showing the active layer of plasma below that layer.
We observed long enough to see changes in the shape of the prominences. We could see the mottled surface of plasma slowly change over time too.
Before tearing down and moving all the astronomy gear inside again, I went in to retrieve Kenzie from her dollhouse so she could at least take a quick look at the sun. She spent a few minutes at the telescopes and then headed back indoors to her dollhouse. She doesn't get to play with her dollhouse all that often anymore so it is understandable that this is where she preferred to spend her time on this morning.
Lukey and I then moved each piece of gear back indoors. It took a few trips into the house but it was far easier and faster than when I need to do this alone. I really can't wait until I have that observatory built! A head injury, the pandemic and the cost of lumber have delayed this project for a few years now. This little planned observatory will make setup and tear down so much easier and far less time consuming.
After we brought everything indoors, I started on french toast and bacon for breakfast. That was good too!
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