Thursday, December 26, 2013

Bad Luck Sun

Observing Train Wreck

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.
This sunspot had a complicated structure with many small sunspots trailing the largest one. The smaller spots showed up much better in ordinary white light than they did in the hydrogen-alpha image above.

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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People say I'm crazy doing what I'm doing
Well they give me all kinds of warnings to save me from ruin
When I say that I'm o.k. well they look at me kind of strange
Surely you're not happy now you no longer play the game

People say I'm lazy dreaming my life away
Well they give me all kinds of advice designed to enlighten me
When I tell them that I'm doing fine watching shadows on the wall
Don't you miss the big time boy you're no longer on the ball

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round
I really love to watch them roll
No longer riding on the merry-go-round
I just had to let it go

John Lennon