Scattered Thoughts . . .

W hen I got up this morning, I immediately noticed that the sun was streaming in our windows and it was a color of light that we haven't seen in quite a while.  It took me a few seconds to recognized it but it was normal, bright sunshine not discolored nor diffused by smoke!  When I peered out the window, I noticed that the sky was a nice blue!  My first thoughts were that I should take advantage of the rare good weather to do some solar astronomy.   Unfortunately, my spine still has not fully recovered from my latest spinal problems that left me crumpled on the bathroom floor a few days ago.  This meant that I would need to keep my astronomy gear to a minimum to limit the amount of gear I would need to lift and carry outside.  So, I decided to go back to basics with simple gear.   I chose my smallest telescope (physical size)...  my Apex 102mm Maksutov-Cassegrain.  I chose my simplest solar filter which is a glass filter that mounts on the front of the telescope.  I chose a tiny s

I was imaging the photosphere of the sun one morning and noticed that a sunspot eerily resembled some skin cancer that I had around that time.   The sunspot was approximately twice the length of the diameter of Earth.  My skin cancer was only about 8mm in length.  Additionally, I was seeing a shocking similarity between granules on the surface of the sun's photosphere  (each approximately 1000 miles across)  and the speckled UV damage of my skin (approximately 1-2mm each)! I've always noticed that, in many ways, the astronomical world of vast and infinite space resembles the microscopic world.  Shapes, networks and structure are comparable.  Both are equally vast but the scale is mind-bogglingly different.  When I see how vast space really is, it has always made me a little queasy and gives me the heebie-jeebies!  This incredibly vast difference in scale between space and humans is stuff I've actually had nightmares about since very early childhood.  Actually, my earliest

I t was a very rare beautiful day yesterday.  Lukey and Kenzie were with us for the day too.  The moment I saw how clear the sky was on this morning, I knew I should be setting up for some solar astronomy at some point during the day.   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 mo

I am all set up to do some solar imaging but I am now waiting for the sun to clear the trees.  This time of year, the sun travels very low across the sky so I only have a relatively short window of opportunity to observe or view the sun.   I plan to start with some white light observing and imaging of the sun's photosphere.  My solar wedge solar filter includes a Continuum filter as well as the usual IR/UV Cut, Neutral Density and Polarizing filters which has always worked fairly well for me.  I've observed and imaged this way before so there is nothing new with this configuration.  I plan to do something new today too though.  I now have a narrowband 3nm Calcium K filter inside a different solar wedge filter that I have yet to try so that will be part of today's plan.  This should produce nicer results.   The one "different" thing about this filter is that this Calcium K filter is not an observing filter.  Actually, my eyes should see nothing through this filter.