VA Eastern Shore

Quick Trip

This year we plan to take small, relatively inexpensive trips to explore the region around our new home. Recently, we visited Virginia's Eastern Shore, a place we hadn't seen in many years. It was fun to cross over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel on a clear, calm day and watch ships from the restaurant viewing area.

Shortly after crossing the bay we stopped at the Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center. A brief, hot walk along one of the trails there brought us to an enormous gun which once guarded the Chesapeake Bay during World War II. The gun had a range of 25 miles and was only fired in practice, never against an enemy. It was originally mounted on a giant concrete bunker under which the gun now sits, and it fired huge shells as C demonstrates below.

Then it was time for a great lunch at the Cape Charles Coffee House in Cape Charles. After lunch we took a slow, leisurely stroll through extremely peaceful streets where wide avenues and almost complete lack of traffic inspired C to call Cape Charles, "the low blood pressure capital of Virginia"! The public beach there was wonderfully uncrowded.

The next day we drove to Chincoteague. On the way we stopped at the NASA Wallops Island Visitor Center where we watched planes practicing aircraft carrier landings on a nearby air strip. Several sounding rockets were on display.

During our last visit to Chincoteague many years ago we were chased from the hiking trails and beach by swarms of biting flies. Apparently, flies have been breeding well ever since. Within five seconds of leaving the car at the NASA Visitor Center I was again attacked by several pesty flies! Later, fortunately, a good breeze off the ocean kept flies away as C enjoyed her time at the sparsely populated beach. Maybe the beach is packed on weekends or holidays, but we enjoyed the retirement perk of uncrowded weekday attendance.

We did see some famous Chincoteague ponies off in the distance while driving back from the beach.

Driving among sparse traffic along Route 13 reminded me of 1950's childhood trips to Florida along Route 301 before Interstate 95 was available. Now, lots of abandoned houses and businesses line the road. Speaking of throwbacks: we had dinner at the Exmore Diner which featured old fashioned diner booths, barstools at a counter, and a reasonably priced menu of good diner food. And none of the gratuitous, annoying background music I hate!! No formless, meandering, grating, jazzy saxophones, or worse, radio stations blaring car commercials!! Just the sound of conversation and dinnerware.

On our final day, on the way home, we stopped in Kiptopeke State Park and explored one of the hiking trails there. The weather was perfect: low humidity, a fragrant breeze, and temperature in the upper 60's. The trail would have been much, much less enjoyable with swarming bugs and steamy humidity. No wildlife was visible, but we enjoyed moseying along the trail.

A spur on the trail went over a boardwalk and onto yet another uncrowded beach.

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel was visible in the distance, and C had one last chance to put her feet in the water.

Soon we were headed back to Interstate 64 and heavy traffic. The Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel was completely blocked by an accident, and we sat at a complete standstill until that was cleared. In Newport News yet another accident had traffic backed up and crawling for miles. Eventually, we got off 64 and took smaller roads home.  

Sunspot Cluster

Beautiful Group

The Sun changes daily. Recently, just by chance, a bunch of sunspots formed close together. I made a quick decision on the afternoon of May 11th to try capturing the sunspot cluster which was nicely located near center on the solar disc. Seeing was surprisingly good despite afternoon heat. Only 48 minutes of clear sky prevailed until increasing fair weather clouds eventually ended the session. The steady atmosphere allowed good detail in the images I did record.

The first picture below, a 2-image mosaic made with a 2X Barlow lens, shows the closely packed swarm of sunspots. Between 5 and 7 dark umbras are all within the field of view! Imagine the complicated magnetic field lines emerging from and descending into umbras, arching from one spot to another!

The next picture is a 7-image mosaic showing the tight grouping within a wider field. An additional small sunspot pair and some filaments are located beneath the major group.

Finally, the eastern portion of the Sun contained a complex sunspot region seen near center in the following picture cropped from a 17-image mosaic. (Click on the image for a larger view.)

It's too bad all the previous images couldn't be joined together in one inclusive mosaic. Unfortunately, I blundered by making image overlap too small in certain key regions. None of my merging programs would stitch the images together, so the three separate images displayed here are the best I could do.

Glorious Prominences

Ring of Fire

After more than three weeks of clouds, rain, and wind, the morning of May 4th was good for solar observing. Seeing conditions varied. At times, the air was steady enough to capture some good images. The Sun displayed only a modest smattering of sunspots, but a lovely array of prominences adorned the limb!

The first picture below is a mosaic composed from 14 individual images, each made with a 2X Barlow lens. It shows roughly one quadrant of the Sun with large double umbra sunspot 2049 above and to the left of center. Sunspot 2047 is below and to the right of center. A bright flaring region is overexposed to the upper right of sunspot 2047. Some beautiful prominences are visible on the limb. (Click on the image for a larger view.)

Next is a mosaic designed to highlight prominences. It was made from 19 individual images, again, using a 2X Barlow lens. Prominences are much dimmer than the Sun's disc. The overexposed disc has been covered by a black circle, so only the prominences and spicules on the rim are seen. When the camera is set to capture prominence detail it also, unfortunately, captures noise in areas close to the Sun's limb. The noise shows up as a hazy collection of dimly lit pixels forming a halo around the Sun's edge. In the picture below I erased most of this noise by hand. It took more than an hour to complete the task and left me blinking through watery eyes by the time I finished. (Click on the image for a more detailed view.)

This is the best image of prominences I've made so far.

Morning Session

Better Seeing

During the past few years I've noticed solar observing conditions are best in the morning between 8am and 11am. The atmosphere seems steadier then, before significant daytime heating occurs. On April 10th I was able to set up equipment for a morning session and, for the first time at my new site, there was almost no wind. I began recording at 8:44am EDT. Seeing was about 7/10 compared to the 5/10 conditions present on previous afternoon sessions. Unfortunately, I had some trouble with mount alignment which caused poor tracking later in the session. Also, for some unknown reason, my DMK41 camera had poor communication with its controlling computer causing video capture times to be twice as long as normal. Consequently, tracking and communication problems cancelled some of the advantages of good seeing.

Most of the interesting solar features were near the east limb. The following mosaic, made with a 2X Barlow lens, is a combination of 10 individual images. The three-umbra sunspot group 2032 can be seen in the upper right. Some nice prominences decorate the limb. A few dark filaments are scattered about. Details are fairly good because the atmosphere was relatively steady. (Click on the images below for enlarged views.)

Next is a closer look at sunspot group 2032. A white burst of energy is located just to the right of the tallest prominence.

The next image is a magnified view of the sunspots made with a 5X Barlow lens. At high magnification the sunspots were slowly drifting due to poor tracking while the video was recorded. In spite of poor tracking there is a good amount of detail in the picture.

The only other sunspot, 2030, was located near the western limb as shown below.

Episodes of good seeing allowed fine details to be visible in this picture of swirling spicules on the Sun's disc.

Finally, an arching prominence was present on the southwestern limb.

I'll have to work on mount alignment and camera communication problems in my next observing session.

Erupting Prominence

Surprise Explosion!

A warm afternoon of solar observing preceded the nighttime session I wrote about in my previous post. The April 2nd afternoon Sun displayed a nice variety of sunspots and filaments, but seeing was not very good. Consequently, the images below aren't as sharp as I'd like. I'm still waiting for a day with good seeing. Maybe morning sessions will have steadier air than afternoons.

The first image below is an imperfect mosaic of 18 individual images taken with a 2X Barlow lens. At top left are sunspots 2027 and 2022. Below them on the left are sunspots 2028 and 2026. Large sunspot group 2021 is just below center to the right. Some nice filaments stretch over the right half of the Sun. The lower left portion of the image is missing because I sometimes lose track of where I am on the disc while moving the telescope to capture patches of the Sun's surface.

My goal for the day was to test a newly acquired tilt adjuster to see if it would eliminate circular interference fringes which have plagued magnified images made with my 5X Barlow lens. The fringes were there as usual before I placed the tilt adjuster into the optical path. When I finished installing the adjuster, the fringes were gone! It worked! I was pleasantly surprised! Below are three magnified images made with the 5X Barlow lens. Details are not particularly sharp, but there are no interference fringes.

First is sunspot 2022 showing a parade of dark arches between the large spot and its small companion.

Next is sunspot 2027 whose dark umbra is split by a curved white energetic feature. More intense white emissions pour from under a dark arching filament in the region to the left of the spot.

Finally, the three-umbra sunspot group 2021 sits in the midst of swirling spicules.

Eventually, just by chance, I'll be lucky to observe in good seeing. When that happens I'm curious to see how much more detail I can capture with the 5X Barlow lens.

After imaging the features on the solar disc I roamed around the rim looking for interesting prominences. That's when I came upon an erupting prominence! Below are two images captured shortly after the eruption began.

The erupting prominence is the tall feature emerging nearly perpendicular to the solar rim. The previous images were taken just two minutes after I first noticed the explosion.

Usually, prominences move rather slowly. This eruption was the first time I've ever seen motion rapid enough to be noticed in just a minute or so. When I first brought the eruption into the field of view it was a small bright lump. A minute later the bright lump had grown significantly outward, and I said, "Whoa!"

Below is a movie showing 11 minutes of action beginning with a bright lump at 3:12:36 EDT and ending with rapidly dimming outward movement at 3:23:19 EDT. I made twenty, 200-frame videos - one every 30 seconds for roughly 11 minutes. The twenty videos resulted in twenty still frames which make up the movie.

The solar surface on the left wavers and goes in and out of focus as the movie plays because the seeing was changing over the movie's duration.  

Old Telescope

Nighttime Observing

In 1975 I bought my first telescope, a Celestron 8-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain. Over the years I've used it many times and learned lots about observing and telescope operation. Recently, however, I haven't used it much because its old fork mount is so hard to use compared to newer computer controlled mounts.

A few weeks ago I purchased adapters to attach the aged Celestron to my beautiful Paramount MX mount. On April 2nd, after a full afternoon of solar imaging with a hydrogen-alpha solar telescope, I used the Celestron to image sunspots through a mylar filter. These sunspot images were poor, but the sky was clear and the weather mild. So I decided to leave the equipment outside and wait for darkness.

The evening session began with a quick look at some familiar celestial sights through an ordinary eyepiece. Then I decided to image Jupiter and the Moon. I attached my DMK41 video camera at the Celestron's prime focus and focused with difficulty on Jupiter. Over the years the Celestron focus has been soft, and this night was no exception. The Jupiter image below was produced by capturing 2,000 video frames, aligning them in Registax 6, stacking the best 100 frames, and then sharpening the final image using wavelets in Registax 6. I have no color filters, so the image is monochrome.

Although seeing was mediocre, some details on Jupiter are barely visible. For example, there are hints of circular features just below the equator. Three moons are visible. From left to right they are: Europa, Io, and Ganymede. The fourth moon, Callisto, was out of view off to the right. Some details reach the threshold of visibility, but are nowhere near the resolution achieved by experts in planetary imaging.

I also captured 7 pictures of the crescent Moon and combined them in the following 7-image mosaic. A slight pale blue color has been added. (Click on the image for a larger view.)

Sunspot images with the Celestron were very disappointing, but hydrogen-alpha solar pictures from the afternoon of April 2nd were much better. I'll post them in my next blog.

Enormous Filaments

Many Features!

Afternoon skies were clear on March 21st, one day after the vernal equinox. It was occasionally breezy, but seeing conditions were slightly better than my previous two observing sessions in Williamsburg. The Sun put on a good show! Sunspots, active areas, and filaments were nicely spread across the solar disc.

The first portrait below is a 26-image mosaic showing most of the action on the disc. From left to right below center are sunspots 2014, 2010, 2008, and 2004. From left to right above center are sunspots 2013 and 2005. Check out all the dark filaments! In particular, notice the three enormous nearly parallel filaments on the lower right! They look like scratch marks from a monumental cosmic claw! (Click on all the images below for a larger view.)

Filaments are held above surrounding gases by magnetic fields. Their levitation shows up well in the next image, an inverted version of the previous picture.

Now take a closer look at some of the features. First, check out those huge filaments near sunspot 2004. The upper filament is roughly 25 Earth diameters long! Its twisty partner underneath is even longer!

The inverted image displays very nice filament float.

Large sunspot 2005 had an active area to its upper left with a filament stretched out toward the upper left.

Sunspot 2014 (lower) and sunspot 2013 (upper) were near the eastern limb. A small active area was gushing near the limb at center.

Sunspots 2010 (left) and 2008 (right) occupied center on the sun's disc as seen in the following cropped segment from a 12-image mosaic. This image, filled with interesting detail, is one of the nicest portraits I've been able to capture recently.

Not many big prominences were present besides this one on the southeastern limb.

All pictures here were made with a 2X Barlow lens. I'm still gathering adapters to eliminate interference fringes which appear in images made with higher power Barlows.