New Barlow Lens

Enormous Prominence!

An enormous prominence hung above the Sun's western limb on October 21st. The prominence was near sunspot 1591 as seen in the image below.

Sunspot 1591 and Prominence (Click for full detail.)

The best of the remaining features was sunspot 1596, shown in the following image taken with a 2X Barlow lens giving a field of view about 10.4 arc minutes wide by 7.8 arc minutes high.

Sunspot 1596 imaged with 2X Barlow (Click for full detail.)

Below is the same sunspot imaged with the new 3X Barlow lens giving a field of view about 8.8 arc minutes wide by 6.6 arc minutes high. The increase in magnification is modest, but it does show some nice detail. The 3X image was taken a few minutes later than the 2X image above. Notice the change that has occurred during the few minutes between the two images.

Sunspot 1596 imaged with 3X Barlow (Click for full detail.)

Unfortunately, the new Barlow lens has introduced circular interference fringes into images it produces. These are caused by multiple reflections within the lens itself. You might notice these fringes in the right half of the image above. I'm investigating ways to remove the fringes through image processing.