Solitary Sunspot

Sunspot Action

A long period of bitter cold, clouds, and snow followed my last solar observing session in February. Hardly any sunspots formed during this time, so I didn't miss much. Lousy weather finally ended on March 7th. Snow had melted and temperature was in the low 50's. One modest sunspot had rotated into view on the Sun's east side with some nice filaments nearby. Unfortunately, seeing was not good.

The following 6-image mosaic shows solitary sunspot 2297 near the eastern limb on the left with two distinctive filaments near the frame's bottom.

I noticed a faint thin stream of gas connected to a bright spot below the sunspot. The gas seemed to be arching up into space as you can see in the next image.

The sunspot had been erupting recently, so, I thought, with luck, I might record some action in a time lapse movie. I began recording movie frames at 1:54 pm EST, recording one image every 60 seconds. When seeing deteriorated drastically, I stopped recording at 2:26 pm EST after accumulating 32 frames. So the following movie captures 32 minutes of solar action. Hot gas seems to rain down from a magnetic arch into a thin stream hitting the bright spot below the sunspot.

There were also some nice prominences on the Sun's western limb shown in this 5-image mosaic.

I quit when bad seeing smeared detail into a blurry mess.

Sky Tracker

New Camera Mount

Over the years I've used my Nikon D40 DSLR camera to take pictures of constellations, conjunctions, and comets. Time exposures were limited to a maximum of 30 seconds for two reasons. First, 30 seconds is the longest available automatically timed exposure that can be done without unavoidable vibration caused by a finger physically depressing the shutter button. Second, 30 seconds is the maximum time before star images elongate due to Earth's rotation. I'm happy to say the 30 second barrier has been removed!

My new Ioptron Sky Tracker can follow Earth's rotation, so star images will remain round in long exposures. I also purchased a remote shutter control so I can manually control exposure time on the "bulb" setting without physically touching the shutter button. Check out my new sky photography setup below. The small cylindrical telescope tube to the right of the camera is the polar alignment scope. While gazing up through the polar alignment scope I adjust the black rectangular box in altitude and azimuth to bring the North Star, Polaris, to the proper position on an illuminated reticle. Once the mount is polar aligned, a battery powered motor inside the black rectangular box turns the camera at just the right speed to keep up with Earth's rotation.

The ball head camera attachment seen below allows variable camera pointing.

The whole camera mount is attached to a tripod.

I waited several weeks to try the new equipment. Weather was miserable - either too cold, too cloudy, or snowing. Finally, on March 7th the sky was clear and temperature was in the 40's. I carried the tripod into my back yard where I immediately cursed the many neighboring spotlights glaring at me from every direction. These lights made it hard to see Polaris through the alignment scope. I also learned alignment could easily be lost by the slightest nudge to the tripod. Camera position had to be changed very slowly and gently in order to maintain alignment.

With my lens set at 18mm I took 60- second and 120-second exposures of Orion, Taurus, and the Pleiades. The 120-second exposure is shown below. Tracking was excellent! Star images are round, though not in perfect focus. The winter Milky Way is visible to the left of Orion. The Hyades and Pleiades are to the upper right of Orion. Hints of pink hydrogen gas are present. This is a single image recorded in JPEG format with no fancy processing. I'm really pleased with the result and anxious to try again with better focus, image stacking, and dark subtraction.

Achieving exact focus continues to be a problem. All my attempts at magnified images were out of focus even though I thought they were in focus when I activated the shutter. It's so hard to judge focus on the camera's display screen. I make test exposures, magnify the results on the camera's image display, make small adjustments to the focus ring, and repeat until star images look sharp. But it's hard to see the display with so any blasted glaring lights all around, and it's hard to remain patient when my hands are freezing. I need to pay more attention to this in the future. I also need to get away from neighborhood lights.

The next image shows the effect of light pollution. This is a 120-second exposure of the constellation Cancer. The brightest object near center is Jupiter. Just above and to the right of Jupiter is the Beehive star cluster. I tried a more magnified image of Jupiter and the star cluster, but the result was out of focus. Notice how the sky is brighter in the lower left than in the upper right. The lower left was closer to the horizon and lit by neighborhood lights.

The zenith sky from my back yard was reasonably dark in 120-second exposures. When I tried 180-second exposures the background sky became light gray instead of black.

These first attempts are promising. I hope to try again soon.

Astounding Filament

Longest Filament Yet!

During five years of solar observation I've never seen a filament as long as the one recently spread across the Sun! This astounding cloud of hot plasma ran like a river: springing up near a sunspot and winding across almost an entire solar diameter on the bottom of the Sun! Here's a 32-image imperfect mosaic showing what it looked like on the afternoon of February 11th:

There were about ten filaments present including the enormous one. Only three modest sunspots added to the scene. The inverted version highlights the filaments.

The next two images are from NASA's orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory. They were taken at about the same time as my images. My images show the solar chromosphere in the 6563-Angstrom visible red light of excited hydrogen atoms. The NASA images show the solar corona, above the chromosphere, in the 193-Angstrom extreme ultraviolet light of 11-times ionized iron atoms. The first image shows that the long giant filament also exists in the corona. The dark area in the center is a coronal hole where solar wind shoots out freely into space towards Earth.

The next NASA image shows magnetic field lines superimposed on the previous image. Whoa! You can see how the long filament runs underneath a tunnel of magnetic field loops. Amazing!

After my last observing session on February 4th I watched online daily as the huge filament gradually revealed itself. The full length eventually came into view as the Sun rotated for seven cloudy days. Finally, on February 11th, the afternoon sky cleared. The temperature was in the low 40's, normally a bit too uncomfortable for pleasant observing, but this unique feature lured me outside. The telescope mount functioned properly, and I captured images from 2:14pm EST to 3:25pm EST. Unfortunately, the seeing was not very good. Close examination of the first mosaic above shows slightly blurry sections. Details throughout are not as sharp as they normally are. That's why I reduced the mosaic from full size to one third size. It does no good to magnify imperfections.

This unusual filament is one of the most dramatic features I've ever seen on the Sun.

February Sun

Correcting Problems

The last time I used my solar telescope more than a month ago I encountered a communication problem between the telescope mount and the software controlling the mount. Up until that point the mount and software had performed flawlessly. I waited through cold cloudy January for an opportunity to investigate the problem. Finally, on February 4th, afternoon temperature reached the low 50's. Thin clouds were present, it was windy, and the seeing was not very good, but it was warm enough to work on the mount/software problem without numb fingers.

Upon startup the mount initially moves to a predetermined "home" position. If the mount is nearly aligned to the north celestial pole, the telescope will then point at the celestial equator about 30 degrees west of the meridian. If the software is properly synchronized with the mount, the software should show the telescope pointing at the celestial equator 30 degrees west of the meridian. When I began my problem solving session on February 4th the telescope itself seemed to be pointing at the correct position in the sky above. The software, however, showed the telescope pointing well below the celestial equator. In other words, the telescope mount and the software were "not on the same page". I hoped I could correct the problem by simply moving the telescope to the Sun and "synchronizing" on the Sun. After this synchronization I commanded the mount to move to the "home" position. This time both the mount and the software were, indeed, "on the same page". I hope this has solved the problem. I'll know the next time I set my equipment up.

After fixing the synchronization problem I captured a few videos through the thin, thickening clouds. A few modest sunspots were scattered about along with a nice collection of filaments on the Sun's eastern side. The following 13-image mosaic made with a 2X Barlow lens shows most of the interesting features. (Click on the images below for a larger view.)

Filaments show up nicely in the following inverted view.

Sunspot 2280 is just to the right of the largest long filament. This filament seems to have a drooping tail hanging from its left end.

Sunspot 2277 was located near center of the solar disc. It is spread out between a prominent dark umbra on the upper left and a group of smaller spots on the lower right.

Details are not bad considering the relatively poor seeing conditions and thin clouds. I've never before started observing as early as February 4th. 

Comet Lovejoy

Second Attempt

Comet Lovejoy was well placed for observation on January 10th. It appeared conveniently high above the horizon among winter constellations in the early evening. Although this comet appears small in wide angle photos, its green color is striking among mostly blue-white stars. The sky was so clear on January 10th I couldn't resist trying to photograph the comet again. It was higher in the sky than it was on my previous attempt on December 30th, and light pollution was a bit lower. Here is the scene recorded by a 30-second unguided exposure. (Click on the images for larger views.)

Focus is slightly off in the images above. I should have been more patient checking precise focus, but freezing cold encouraged premature surrender.

Just for fun I tried getting an image with a 200mm telephoto lens. Star trailing due to Earth's rotation was a problem, of course. You can see the elongated star images in the following 10-second exposure. Focus is also not sharp. Nevertheless, the green fuzzy head of the comet is visible. The green color comes from diatomic carbon molecules excited by solar ultraviolet light.

These comet imaging experiences increased my desire for a sky tracking camera mount which will allow longer exposures without star trails. Longer exposures would reveal the comet's beautiful tail. The images above are really disappointing compared to images captured with tracking cameras.

This comet was spectacular in my 25X100 binoculars on January 16th! The coma filled a good portion of the field of view, and I could see part of the tail.

Conjunction at Dusk

Venus and Mercury Draw Close

Viewed from my front yard, Venus and Mercury hovered near treetops in the southwest about 25 minutes after sunset on January 9th. The two planets were separated by only 42.5 arc minutes (0.71 degrees) - just slightly more than the width of a full Moon!

Venus is the brighter planet near center in the image below. Dimmer Mercury is close by, offset lower to the right. The first two pictures are a very good representation of how the conjunction appeared to the naked eye. (Click on the images below for the full-sized view.)

It didn't take long for Mercury to set below the trees while my frozen fingers worked camera buttons. These first two pictures were taken with a 55mm lens.

On January 10th the planets had moved even closer together. Now they were only 38.5 arc minutes (0.64 degrees) apart, and I used a telephoto lens set at 200 mm for a magnified view. The sky was very clear - no haze or thin clouds.

The planets sank lower while a jet contrail headed toward the gap between them.

Click on the next image to get a larger view. It looks like I captured evidence of the partial phase of Mercury.

I moved the camera so my last shot would catch the pair sinking into atmospheric murk and setting into the lowest gap in the trees.

This was a particularly nice conjunction and very beautiful in binoculars.

 

Back Yard Comet?

Lousy Conditions

Comet Lovejoy (C/2014 Q2) has become well placed for observation from my house. On December 30th the comet was in the constellation Lepus, below Orion, and well above my southeastern horizon an hour or so before midnight. I quickly found the comet with binoculars. Glaring lights from nearby houses were extremely annoying, but they did not prevent clear views of the comet's fuzzy greenish coma in both my 11X80 binoculars and my 25X100 binoculars. 

Bright moonlight lit the sky. Neighborhood Christmas lights added their glow to numerous unshielded porch lights and window lights from surrounding houses. Nevertheless, I tried to photograph the comet from my back yard. The image below is a 30-second unguided exposure at ISO 1600.

You can see how bright the sky is, particularly near the bottom of the picture closer to the roof of a nearby house. Unless you know where to look the comet is hard to see. In the next picture I modified the brightness levels and cropped the view. It looks a little better, but the comet is quite small and not immediately obvious.

Next is a labeled version of the previous picture so you can see where the comet is. Click on the image below for a slightly better view.

Comet Lovejoy was certainly not a "knock your socks off" naked eye comet on December 30th. Long exposures through telescopes yielded some very nice views of the coma and tail, but the wide angle unguided pictures I took showed only a small fuzzy spot. I may try my luck again when the Moon begins to wane after January 4th.