Scattered Thoughts . . .

M any  nights before heading to bed, I continue to try to refine my workflow for processing my solar imagery data.  I'm definitely beginning to understand what needs to be done in this process because I feel my resulting images are getting better and better.  This photo, below, is a photo I compiled and processed from data collected just a couple of days ago on July 31st.   I've found that when I black out the disk/sphere of the sun, everything on the limb of the sun really stands out.  The fine hair-like spicules of red-hot plasma are clearly visible all along the limb.  In this particular shot, there is a rather large prominence too which really is the main subject here.  This is red glowing plasma consisting of hydrogen and helium.  This prominence is flowing and looping along magnetic fields about 24,000 miles into the corona from in front of the limb to back behind the limb in this photo.  Generally speaking, prominences can flow and loop into the corona upwards of tens of

I did some mower blade sharpening and balancing this morning.  That little bit of activity started another coughing bout which helped to clear out my lungs a bit so I guess that is a good outcome.   This illness/virus just won't go away though.  My O2 level is at 94% now which is not great but better than it has been.  I've been as low as the mid-80s.  So, I suppose I am improving...  slowly...  very slowly.  I suspect that the low oxygen intake is adding to my usual overwhelming fatigue.  Anyway, I did a little bit of very light work in the yard this morning. Oh yeah...  before I did the blade sharpening, I also sheared a bush in the yard that was far too shaggy.  Shaggy, sloppy landscaping drives me crazy.  There is rarely a good excuse for it so I hate seeing it.  Shaggy, sloppy landscaping is more often due to laziness and I hate laziness and procrastination as well.   The most strenuous part of cleaning up that one tall bush in our yard was pulling out a step ladder and c

I am still feeling rather lousy and lacking energy so I didn't think it would be wise to do much today.  My plan was to lay low and recover.  I want this virus behind me...  once again!  (Perhaps the third time is the charm.)   The lawn is in need of mowing but I have been putting that off for the past few days in an attempt to recover.  This morning was a fairly clear day outside though so I mustered up the energy to drag one of my telescopes outside to do some solar observing again for a short while.  This wouldn't require nearly as much energy as mowing the lawn or any other project that needs to be done so solar observing was the thing to do this morning. This time I grabbed my longest telescope so I could do some closeup observing. I haven't used this telescope in a while.  This telescope is fairly long at 1000mm.  When we combine that with the internal Barlow lens of the Quark Chromosphere hydrogen alpha solar filter I was using, that put my total focal length at 420