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.

Successful Mosaic

Spiky Eruption

Two cold fronts passed in succession leaving a clear sky on September 14th. Observing conditions were wonderful. Temperature ranged between 68 and 71 degrees, and a slight breeze puffed from time to time. It had been cloudy and hot nearly every day for the previous three weeks, and the Sun had been almost entirely blank. So it was nice to finally have some modest solar activity on a comfortable clear day. This Modis satellite image shows how cloud free it was over the eastern U.S. coast on September 14th. My location is marked with an arrow.

The cloudless sky gave me time to capture the entire Sun in the following 38-panel mosaic using a 5X Barlow lens. The image presented below is only one quarter the size of the original 6826 by 6284 pixel image! Four sunspots are visible in the southern hemisphere. From left to right they are numbered: 2418, 2415, 2412, and 2414. Some nice prominences adorn the eastern and western limbs. This is the most successful mosaic I've made so far with my ZWO ASI174MM camera. (Click on the images for larger views.)

The next 4-panel mosaic shows a closer view of sunspots 2418 and 2415.

Sunspots 2412 and 2414 were near prominences on the Sun's western limb.

While capturing videos for the whole disc mosaic I was lucky to see a temporary spiky eruption from the vicinity of sunspot 2418. The eruption didn't last long, probably less than 20 minutes.

Finally, I tried making an image from a 2000-frame video instead of my usual 400-frame video. The following picture of sunspot 2415 was made by stacking the best 100 frames from a 2000-frame video.

The previous image contains probably the best detail I'll ever get with my particular combination of telescope, camera, and viewing location.

First Day of School

Kindergarten and Preschool

My granddaughters, Sophie and Annabelle, passed a major milestone last week. Sophie started kindergarten, and Annabelle started preschool. Sophie took great care preparing her backpack for the big day.

Annabelle got some breakfast in her special chair.

Then it was time for pictures. Three cameras were furiously clicking!

Grandparents took their turn in the photo limelight.

It was time to walk to the bus stop. Sophie's entourage included her Mom, sister, and three grandparents.

Sophie met a new friend at the bus stop, a kindergarten classmate. Soon they were looking for bugs together.

When the bus arrived, Sophie set off cheerfully on her new adventure.

Later, Annabelle was warmly greeted by her teacher at her special preschool.

Annabelle gets along with everybody. Soon she was happily installed in her special chair and busy with her classmates.

My earliest memories begin in kindergarten - memories of mistakes, disasters, and misunderstandings. I hope Sophie and Annabelle, instead, will have happy memories of friendships and success.

Exploring With My Granddaughter

Nature Hike

My granddaughter has discovered the joy of walking through the woods!

I was recently invited to accompany Sophie and her Mom on a little hike in neighboring forests. Just before the hike began I saw a red-shouldered hawk on a residential lawn.

Unfortunately, I brought no telephoto lens. When I approached for a closer shot, the hawk flew away and perched itself, majestically, on a rooftop.

Much to our dismayed amusement Sophie insisted on preparing a fully loaded backpack. She enjoyed stuffing her pack with essentials like crayons, markers, notepads, dolls, and snacks. She wore boots in case we wanted to walk through any water. Here Sophie and her Mom begin our adventure on the bike path ahead.

Soon Sophie wandered off the path anxious to show me where she had explored on an earlier trip.

What's more fun when you're a kid than walking through a stream? Sophie walked through overhanging vegetation where I declined to follow.

Next, it was time for a snack on the bank beside the stream.

Upon resuming our walk we encountered an amazing number of wild grape vines. As you might expect, most of the low hanging fruit had been removed, but the vines were heavy with grapes higher up. The ripe wild grapes tasted like Concord grapes.

Sophie said, "This tree looks like a fork!"

Along the shaded trail we encountered a pair of dueling butterflies. Two swallowtails seemed to be battling each other as they circled up and around us.

We next spotted an odd furry creature huddled against a tree trunk. The red glow in its eye from the camera flash made it look like a small demon from hell. We think it must be someone's pet rabbit that somehow escaped into the woods.

Soon it was time for the hike to end. Ellen and Sophie walked off to their home not far away.

It has always been my hope to encourage Sophie's curious observation of the natural world. I wanted to collect specimens along the way for her to view later through a microscope. On this trip I came upon only one, a dead green beetle which I scooped up for later examination.

A few days later I persuaded Sophie to examine the beetle through my microscope. It might be an impossible task, but I'll gently urge her to patiently examine things in detail. I've seen too many people look through an eyepiece for 3 seconds and think they've seen everything. Slow, careful observation shows the depth of nature's beauty and reveals features not noticed at first glance.

But Sophie's attention span is limited at this point. After looking at the beetle's hairy, spiky legs, Sophie pronounced them "gross and creepy". She was then eager to run off and play with something else. I hope we do more exploring in the future.

Conflicting Forecasts

Contradictory Predictions 

Meteorologists often fail to correctly forecast cloud cover. On August 25th one weather forecasting service predicted cloudy skies all day. Another forecasting service predicted completely clear skies and good seeing for a few hours after noon. The forecasts were contradictory! What actually happened?

The sky was almost completely clear around noon, giving me confidence in the reliability of the clear sky forecast. This temporary absence of clouds was the first opportunity in weeks to use my telescope. A few days before August 25th a relatively small sunspot evolved into a giant active complex feature. For days I watched it grow as it moved east to west across the Sun's face. Sunspot activity has been sparse lately, so this unusual episode of clear sky was an opportunity I didn't want to miss. If I didn't catch the sunspot this day, it would rotate out of sight before the next clear day. So I hustled and hauled my equipment outside. It takes about 45 minutes to set up the telescope, acquire the Sun, tune the solar filter, and get the computer and camera ready for imaging. During the setup time I'm usually looking at the equipment and not the sky. Consequently, I was shocked to discover thin clouds drifting across the first images on the computer screen. When I looked around the sky I saw massive cloud banks moving in from the north and west! The clouds had almost covered the sky in the 45 minutes it took to get my equipment ready!

I hurried to capture a few videos through cloud gaps before the situation became hopeless. Fortunately, a few images were relatively unaffected by clouds. The first picture below shows the large sunspot 2403 I had hoped to capture. (Click on the images for a larger view.) Some bright white energetic emissions appear in the space between the giant double umbra on the right and the four smaller trailing umbras on the left. There is good detail in the image, particularly the different shades of darkness in the four trailing umbras. This image was made with a 5X Barlow lens by stacking the 100 best frames from a 1000-frame video.

A few minutes before the previous image was captured the sunspot looked like the next picture made by stacking the best 40 frames from a 400-frame video.

This second image was processed differently than the first image. I think some details are slightly sharper in the second image, and there are subtle differences between the second image and the first.

What a shame the clouds halted my session after less than an hour! The Sun had several nice filaments and prominences in addition to the large sunspot. I started capturing images for a whole disc mosaic, but had to stop after only nine panels were recorded. The next image is a 9-panel imperfect mosaic showing the immediate area around sunspot 2403. The Sun was in and out of clouds during the entire acquisition time.

To the left of center is a region of sharp spicules. On the extreme right center edge you can see the bottom of a huge hanging prominence lifting straight out from the solar limb. Too bad I didn't capture more of this hanging feature. (Click on the image to see these features more clearly.)