Filaments Galore

 Spectacular Solar Scenery

On July 12th only a brief cloudless window opened to allow imaging an active Sun. After 45 minutes setting up my equipment I recorded the first video clip at 10:18 am EDT. Scattered clouds began appearing 51 minutes later at 11:09. Twenty minutes later it was too cloudy to continue! This happens frequently at my observing site. It seems like I'm always rushing to get images before clouds interfere. This day I roasted in 80-to-85-degree temperatures, although an occasional breeze helped.

Future weeks of cloudy weather were forecast, so this was an opportunity I couldn't miss. Lots of solar features made my effort worthwhile as you can see in the first image below. It's a 12-panel mosaic made with a 3X Barlow lens. Each panel is a stack of 400 best quality frames selected from a 4,000-frame video. (Click on the image to see full detail.)

Several spectacular dark filaments are scattered across the disc. They are relatively cooler gases confined by magnetic fields above the hotter chromosphere below. In the image's upper half, from left to right, are sunspots 3057 and 3053. In the image's lower half small sunspot 3056 is at left and major spot 3055 is near center. The next image is an inverted version of the previous image. Here white areas are cooler and dark areas are hotter. Filaments appear like white clouds floating above the surface underneath.

Next is a close view of major sunspot 3055 and accompanying filaments. Evidence of curved magnetic field lines can be seen in the complicated sunspot structure. 

Smaller sunspot 3053 was near an interesting long curved filament.

Only one portion of the solar limb contained prominences of note. Tiny sunspot 3056 is near a white active region. A portion of sunspot group 3055 is visible near the right image edge.

I was exhausted after this rushed and sweaty imaging session, but happy to successfully capture some spectacular solar scenery.
 

Old Pictures

 Photo Restorations

I recently obtained old photo albums belonging to my Aunt Carol who played an important role in my life. She was born in 1915, and I mostly remember her as an old woman. So it was very interesting to see pictures of her as a child and young woman. For example, the next picture shows her 101 years ago in first grade. Aunt Carol is third from the right in the first row. Check out her high shoes. The original picture was blemished and cracked. I manually repaired it, as you can see in the following animation. Another interesting photo was taken eight years later in 1929. I'm guessing Aunt Carol was in 8th or 9th grade at the time. Once again she is third from the right in the front row. This photo was less damaged than the 1st grade picture, but I still cleaned it up: Seven years later, at age 21 in 1936, Aunt Carol posed in front of a car that looks impossibly ancient today.

During World War II, eight years later, Aunt Carol joined the Waves (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), a women's branch of the U.S. Navy. She trained pilots using a device known as a Link Trainer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_Trainer ). The next picture shows Aunt Carol at the controls of the flight simulator which is visible in darkness at upper right. Next is a brighter picture showing an occupied trainer along with controls in the foreground. Aunt Carol, with headphones, is seated on the right edge. Notice the amazingly outdated 1940 technology in front of the blond controller. There are big honking vacuum tubes instead of invisibly small transistors, analog dials instead of digital displays, and the controller is turning dials instead of using a mouse or joy stick.

Aunt Carol is actually sitting in the trainer in this next picture taken at the Naval Air Station in Melbourne, Florida in 1944. I assume the others in the foreground were part of the training crew. Aunt Carol was the youngest of my father's siblings. She was also the most independent and ambitious. She held a variety of jobs during her career and was a pioneering woman in many of them. A lover of warm weather and beaches, she spent most of her life in Florida where she lived to be 99 years old, just 25 days short of 100. Here she is in 1941, 26 years old, on one of her beloved beaches.

Beach Time

Sunny Days

Weather was nearly perfect for our annual beach trip this year. Only one brief overnight shower interrupted a string of beautiful mild sunny days. The rental house was in good shape. Keegan, our resident engineer and handyman, set up a hammock and hammock chair with Sophie's help on one of the porches.It wasn't long before Sophie and C were relaxing in the hanging chair.Father and daughter enjoyed hanging around.It's only a short distance to the beach. Annabelle goes in her specialized "Wike".The well-equipped family heads off to the ocean.

Ellen and Keegan spent hours relaxing under their new Sun shade. Sophie got some nap time between water activities.

Annabelle doesn't enjoy the beach very much because she's mostly confined to her "Wike". She REALLY enjoys the backyard pool, however, where the buoyancy of her neck float allows her to move around by kicking and paddling. She happily drifts around chirping/singing her characteristic "Oh, yeah" as she goes.After beach time everyone hangs around the pool while Annabelle has her fun.Sophie loves her phone at the pool or inside.

Sophie loved the new dress she got while visiting boardwalk shops in Duck.

Annabelle likes to sit at the table with everyone else.Ellen and I have a jigsaw puzzle bash each summer at the beach. This year we started with an ambitious 1,000-piece Wentworth puzzle featuring colorful birds. Assembly was initially daunting because pieces had unusual shapes. It was hard to identify border pieces without the usual straight edges. Eventually, we got the hang of it and finished in less than a week. The end result was quite pretty!

With extra puzzle time available, Ellen broke out another bird puzzle. This one was much easier, with only 500 traditionally shaped pieces. With Sophie's help we soon finished.Ellen and Keegan posed for a nice sunset portrait up in the crow's nest.

Traffic on the drive home was amazingly backup free this year, even on the 8-mile-long nightmare construction segment on Interstate 64. Maybe construction will finally be complete for next year's trip, but, at the present progress rate, I'm not hopeful.