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.

June Sun

Near the Solstice

Two months have passed since my last solar imaging session - two months of cloudy days, missed opportunities, and featureless Sun. On June 18th a brief observing window opened. Morning temperature hovered in the mid-70's, one or two scattered clouds floated by, and occasional gusty breezes made conditions good enough for hauling out my solar telescope. Some nice solar features were on display. The first image below is a 17-panel mosaic showing most of the sunspots and filaments present.In the upper hemisphere, from right to left, are sunspots 3030, 3032, and 3034. In the lower hemisphere, on the right, is sunspot 3031. A long filament stretches up to the left from sunspot 3032. The previous image shows disc features but not prominences around the solar rim. The next version, with different processing, is colored pale yellow. It overexposes the disc but allows prominences to be visible.

Lots of prominences were visible this day! Next is a 4-panel mosaic showing prominences on the Sun's eastern limb.

The next image is a 6-panel mosaic showing prominences around the Sun's western limb. 

The best, most detailed image from this session is the next 2-panel mosaic showing sunspots 3030, 3032, and 3034 with accompanying filaments. Each panel was made by stacking the best 400 frames from 4,000-frame videos. This picture achieves about the best resolution my equipment can produce. Enlarge the image by clicking on it in order to see all the detail present. In fact, all the images here should be clicked and enlarged for the best view.

Finally, here's a close view of sunspots 3030 and 3032 with filaments and neighboring prominences. 

I began recording videos at about 9:40 am. Less than an hour later clouds began increasing. Brief observing windows like this are typical here in eastern Virginia.

Meteors? Not Very Many.

 Pleasant Observing Conditions

During the night of May 30-31 Earth's orbital motion brought our planet through debris from the breakup of comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann3. Experts predicted a meteor shower caused by comet fragments burning up in our atmosphere. Shower intensity was uncertain. Predictions ranged from only a few meteors per hour to a thousand per hour meteor storm. A true meteor storm is not to be missed! When clear moonless conditions were present for the event, I made sure to watch.

The sky was slightly hazy and neighborhood light pollution was almost minimum. Observing conditions were about as comfortable as possible! Mosquitos were blown away by a slight breeze, and temperature hovered in the low 70's. I scanned near the dark zenith from a comfortable lounge chair. There were no visible meteors during my first attempt at about 10:00 pm. At 11:30 pm I tried again only to be frustrated by a neighbor's glaring light. Maximum intensity was predicted to occur at about 1:00 am, so I made one last attempt then. During the next 50 minutes or so I saw only 7 Tau Herculid meteors from comet debris. Only one of these was relatively bright. The other six were dim and unspectacular.

Hazy light polluted sky together with my age diminished eyesight probably made some dim meteors impossible to see. I wondered if a camera would capture some, so I set up a tripod mounted phone camera to take a few 10-second exposures. One image did capture a dim meteor at 1:59:43 am EDT on May 31. Can you see it below? It's near top center above the constellation Scorpius.

Another 10-second exposure captured a bit of the Milky Way and the constellation Sagittarius at 2:05 am.

Seven meteors in an hour is certainly not a meteor storm! This Tau Herculid meteor event ranks pretty low compared with others I've seen over the years. For example, I've twice seen 67 meteors in an hour during December's Geminid Meteor Shower. I saw 118 Leonid meteors from 3:47 to 5:00 am on November 17, 1998 while observing from a field in Forest, VA. The most spectacular meteor night I've ever seen was the Leonid Meteor Shower on the morning of November 19, 2002. Observing from the Ivy Hill Golf Course in Forest, VA I saw 293(!) meteors from 4:54 to 6:07 am. This is about one meteor every 15 seconds on average! It's probably safe to say this 2002 Leonid event will be the best meteor shower I'll ever see in my lifetime!  

 

 

   

Rock Show

 Natural Wonders

I last attended the New Jersey Mineral, Fossil, Gem & Jewelry Show in 2018 before the covid disaster. Four years later, fully vaccinated and masked, it was time to cautiously venture out and visit this enjoyable rock show again. Avoiding most of the Interstate 95 nightmare, the drive on alternate routes from VA to NJ wasn't bad. Shortly after entering the exhibit hall I was awestruck by beautiful aquamarine crystals from Pakistan.

I'd love to purchase one of these beauties for my collection, but, as you can see from the $7,500 price tag on the last specimen above, they were out of my price range! Single aquamarine crystals were less expensive, but still too much for me.

Moving on from the aquamarine display I browsed lots of exhibits with quality specimens - still expensive even with 50 percent off!

I've given up trying to buy some rhodochrosite. Check out the price on the following exquisite specimen. 

A few vendors sold meteorites. Here are interior slices of an iron/nickel meteorite showing the famous Widmanstatten pattern. 

A dinosaur fossil display was popular with kids.

A fossil wooly rhino skull from Siberia was displayed at one of the nicest fossil and mineral exhibits. (The horns are replicas.)

Fabulously detailed Jurassic fossils from the German Solnhofen Limestone were amazing! 

The second shrimp fossil above would be a wonderful showpiece if I had a place to put it and could afford the $650 price. Another fossil spectacular was this crinoid priced at $5,500.

In addition to fossils, minerals, and gems, many other vendors had interesting colorful displays.

A few vendors were selling gongs. Apparently, exposing your body to vibrations from a large nearby gong has some kind of "healing/calming" effect. At least that's how several women seemed to be treating it. The women would ask a gong vendor to hold the vibrating gong about 9 inches from the their torso while they turned like you would turn your body slowly around while taking a hot shower. Then the women would say something like, "Very nice." Some of these gongs were really impressive featuring elaborate designs. The sounds were quite loud and penetrating. The Nepalese exhibit had the biggest gong hanging from a stand. On the floor directly in front of this gong was a large ringing bowl about 24 inches in diameter. A few women were participating in some kind of ritual activity where they would stand barefoot in the ringing bowl while someone simultaneously struck the giant gong and activated the ringing bowl. This large gong was amazingly loud! I'm guessing the women experienced some intense internal effect from all the vibration. At any rate, the incredible acoustic blast caused nearby vendors to complain because it was driving away customers.

Some modest specimens I purchased for my collection are pictured below.

The first specimen, peridot on basalt, brought to mind a section of pallasite meteorite I obtained years ago. Both show peridot together with materials from inside their parent bodies.

This sample of malachite from China has a velvety glow under strong light.

Bright yellow orpiment is a compound of arsenic and sulfur. This sample is from the Senduchen Mine in Yakutia, Siberia.

The tiny green crystals below are a relatively rare gem garnet called uvarovite from Sarony in Russia's Ural Mountains. It was named after a Russian nobelman, Count Uvarov, in 1832. The green color comes from chromium.

Under a microscope some individual crystals can be seen below. The crystals are supposed to be dodecahedral, but I can't see any pentagonal shapes characteristic of platonic dodecahedrons. The plane faces appear mostly square to me.

I can't resist the beauty of raw opals whose colors change when tilted in sunlight. These samples are from Ethiopia.

It was hard to record red opal colors with my phone camera in the picture above. So I put one opal piece under a microscope where red highlights were more easily captured.

Finally, this nice specimen of marcasite on calcite crystals really sparkles under strong light.

I enjoyed the show, but don't know if I'll return again. It's a long trip with diminishing returns. I've no room for large specimens, and can't afford to buy the nice ones anyway. I wore a mask but still developed a sore throat a few days after returning home - the cost of leaving my safe covid cocoon.