October Clear Spell Continues

Improved Seeing

On October 19th, one day after my previous observing session, seeing conditions were much improved. This time it was a bit warmer, with temperature ranging from 50 to 53 degrees and only a light puffy breeze. There wasn't a cloud in sight. Seeing was good enough to see pointed spicules on the solar limb. These spicules were smeared and blurry during the previous day of poor seeing. 

On this nearly perfect day there were no prominences around the edge of the Sun. But sunspots and filaments on the solar disc showed up nicely in the following 21-panel mosaic reduced to one third of the original size. (Click on the images for a larger view.)

The inverted version of the previous image highlights filaments.

The two major sunspots are 2436 on the left and 2434 on the right in the next closer view.

Near the end of my session I captured sunspot 2434 with a 2000 frame video and stacked the best 100 frames to produce the following image.

Interesting swirling structure and filaments surround the sunspot. 

October Clear Spell

Bad Seeing

Very often an extended stretch of clear skies happens during October. This year hardly any clouds appeared between October 18th and October 21st. On the 18th, the first clear day, I made a special effort to use my solar telescope since it had been more than a month since my last observing session. It was a cool 50 degrees and breezy. Seeing conditions were forecast to be poor, and the forecast was correct. Solar features were a blurry, jittery mess. Nevertheless, I captured enough videos to construct the following 29-panel imperfect mosaic which shows a modest array of solar features.

Sunspot pair 2436 is on the left near the limb. Sunspot 2434 is below center. One large prominence is on the lower left rim, and a few filaments are scattered about. The mosaic posted here has been reduced to one quarter size from the original. If you click on the image and examine it closely, you will see some blurry areas which were captured when the seeing was particularly bad.

Prominent sunspot 2434 was surrounded by some nice filaments shown in the next image made with a 5X Barlow lens.

Details in the previous image are not as sharp as they could be, but, considering how turbulent the air was, the image is not bad.

Only 40 minutes after I started capturing videos some fair weather clouds began drifting by. The seeing was so poor that I decided to end the session and hope for steadier viewing the next day. The next day actually did turn out much better as you will see in my next post.  

Down By The Riverside

Glorious Day!

Some days in October are truly golden. October 12th was such a day - a perfect fall day. I took a stroll with C along the banks of the James River near Jamestown. During spring and summer a walk in this location would be plagued by mosquitoes and biting flies. But on this perfect day, there were no bugs. We walked in afternoon sunlight. The calm riverbank basked in a warm glow.

The James River was very peaceful.

Late afternoon sunshine lit the river.

Soon after leaving these quiet scenes we surprised an antlered buck grazing along the path. A hawk flew across the tree line. Crickets chirped.

I really enjoyed this lingering warm day.