Scattered Thoughts . . .

I did a little bit more research and testing of the custom spectroheliograph I am building yesterday.  This time I actually captured a single frame of data of one spectral line.  Honestly, I can't even remember which line this was...  Hydrogen alpha?  Sodium?  Continuum?  I honestly don't remember and I suppose it does not matter.  I just wanted to make a little more progress in this project. This image is just one still image of a spectral line captured without the use of a telescope of any sort.  I simply had the spectroheliograph pointed out our living room window.  My purpose was simply to see what a captured image would look like.  For collecting data to compile an actual image of the current sun, I would need to be connected to a telescope and then capture video...  from one end of the spectral line scanning toward and beyond the opposite end of the spectral line.  It would be a completely different process. One thing I did noticed in this image is that either my focus w

Two lines of severe thunderstorms rolled through our area last night just a couple of days after catastrophic flooding.  This threatened a repeat of the flooding only hours after most of the flooding at receded.   There is no doubt that there were severe thunderstorms in these two lines of severe weather but it just barely clipped us.  Most of the severe weather was slightly north of us.  We got about an inch of rain and the sky was like a midwestern light show of constant lightning and rumbling thunder.   I've lived all across the country and I have to say that the most common thunderstorms in the midwest are what would be considered very severe thunderstorms in the northeast.  These common midwestern thunderstorms are ominous with lightning every second or two, heavy downpours, damaging hail, ferocious wind, with constant rumbling of thunder.  Last night, it was easy to tell that this type of weather was in our area but, fortunately, the truly severe storms were just barely north

I did some more work on the custom spectroheliograph yesterday but I seemed to only make things worse.  It was definitely one of those days!  I had started over with the entire process of assembly in an attempt to eliminate the little problems I was still seeing but I seemed to introduce even bigger problems than the ones I was trying to resolve.   I think part of my problem and the one that was the most time consuming of all the problems was a software problem.  At some point, a red box was moving around on the screen as you can see in the image below.  The box would scroll right...  then left...  then up...  seemingly for absolutely no reason at all.  At first, I was wondering if it was some border around the holographic grating to indicate my alignment was way off.  I swapped cameras and the problem disappeared so I then knew it was not a problem with my instrument.  I then tried the original camera using different software and I had no problems.  At this point I realized that the p

We are somewhere in the midst of unrelenting solid rainfall and flash flooding.  Fortunately, we are in a relatively safe area (meaning higher ground away from rivers) although I suspect the septic tank will be full of water for a while and the yard will likely be mush for a few days if and when the rain ever stops.  Downtown Waterbury, a small town that was devastated by Tropical Storm Irene and a town that just finished rebuilding its infrastructure due to Irene's wrath and high water within just the past month, is likely going to be flooded as badly as Irene caused or worse.  On the plus side, I can't think of any reason why we would need to go anywhere for the next few days and we probably cannot go anyplace because our roads will likely be under water and perhaps washed out.  Bridges and roads are being washed out across our area. In the meantime, I stayed indoors and worked on more adjustments on the rudimentary spectroheliograph I am building.  I am understanding more an

All the parts for the spectroheliograph I am making have arrived from France over the past couple of weeks.  Today is a day of thunderstorms so I decided to start assembling this instrument. The last parts to arrive were the optical parts...  two doublet lens assemblies, a tiny slit, and a holographic grating.  I needed to disassemble the 3D printed parts so I could assemble the entire instrument with the optical parts included.  Of course, I first cleaned up the room and removed as much dust as possible. Once I assembled everything, it was time to connect it to a computer so I could make some tedious fine adjustments and then test everything. The first obstacle to overcome was that the holographic grating was not in line with the rest of the assembly.  I needed to shim this significantly and it is still not right.  I might need to re-shim this part after more testing.   Unfortunately, it is quite dark outside today with dark clouds changing the light significantly within seconds.  I w

I mentioned in a previous blog entry  that I had compared one of my solar images to the images captured by the National Solar Observatory in El Tiede, Spain and I shared comparison images.  While I was lying in bed last night, I got to thinking that perhaps I should provide more information about the National Solar Observatory.  It seems silly to mention this and not explain it a bit. The National Solar Observatory (NSO) is a research and development program funded by the US.  Generally speaking, its purpose is to advance our knowledge of the physics of our sun.  The NSO isn't actually one physical observatory but a network of observatories around the globe that are constantly collecting data on our sun. In yesterday's blog entry, I compared my quick and dirty Hydrogen alpha image to the Hydrogen alpha image captured by the NSO Integrated Synoptic Program's Observatory in El Tiede, Spain.  This NSO Integrated Synoptic Program (NISP) consists of six observing systems around

I 've been working on putting together a very small telescope for capturing the full disk of the sun in the Hydrogen alpha wavelength.  Actually, I've been working on two different solar astronomy projects.  This project should not be confused with building a spectroheliograph which is another project I am working on at the moment.  That spectroheliograph project is much more complex than this one.  I'm still waiting on the optical parts to arrive from France for that project.  In the meantime, I came up with an idea that I had written about here but it wasn't until this morning that I was able to get outside in the sun to test this new setup. When I put together this surprisingly tiny telescope (it is really a small 50mm guide scope), I wasn't sure of the spacing required to get everything to come to focus.  I wasn't even completely sure whether I would have success in capturing the full disk of the sun.  It was possible that I would still be too magnified and

W e had a really nice birthday barbeque celebration in the backyard this past weekend.  Although it was a bit smoky from the Canadian wildfires, the weather was actually quite nice for a change! The company was good.  The food was good.  The drinks were cold.  There were plenty of games to play.  The rain stopped just long enough for us to set up the yard on Friday, have a great time together on Saturday and then clean up before it started raining again.   Looking at these photos, it seems to me that everyone had a good time! As always, the kids congregated on the sailboat most of the day.  At one point, four of the grandchildren were on the sailboat at the same time (photo above).  I have no idea how they all fit in that rather small cockpit!  In hindsight, when I saw that the four of them were on the sailboat together, I should have had Liza place 10 day old Sophia into Lukey or Kenzie's arms too so I could get a photo of all the grandchildren on the sailboat at the same time.