Back on November 8th huge sunspot area 1890 had rotated to the center of the Sun's disk. In spite of the cold morning and low altitude of the Sun, I decided to set up my telescope to capture the best sunspot in quite a while. It wasn't long before the train wreck started.
First, I had forgotten about the change from daylight savings time to standard time. I thought I was setting up with plenty of time before the Sun would be blocked by an obscuring tree. In fact, I was an hour late. When I was ready to get the first image, the Sun just started passing behind the tree! So I had to wait an hour and 20 minutes before the Sun emerged clear of the branches. I then managed to quickly capture four video clips before the next problem popped up: the communication link between the telescope and the computer broke. By the time I reestablished communication, the seeing conditions had deteriorated significantly. The Sun's surface was swimming around and tremendously blurred. I waited a while for the atmosphere to settle, but soon noticed clouds moving across the Sun. I looked up from the computer to see many clouds moving in from the west. At this point I had spent about 3.5 hours trying to image the Sun and obtained only four images for my efforts. It was time to give up.
When I later examined the four images, only one was reasonably sharp. Sunspot 1890 was really spectacular a few days earlier. I couldn't capture its full glory then because it was cloudy. Just my luck. Here's the one decent picture I captured of sunspot 1890 with a 2X Barlow. Click on the image for a larger view.
Observing season has ended for the year. Next year I'll observe from a new improved location free from obscuring trees and buildings which have plagued me in the past.
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