Today's Sun

This has been an unusual year; first the pandemic, then more clouds than I have seen, constantly, in decades. I know I've mentioned it before, but it has been difficult to get any images of the sun or anything at night. This morning, with no clouds, I went for the sun, and got something, at least. As shown in the image below, which was taken in hydrogen alpha light (around 652 nm, if I recall correctly), we can see one sunspot, AR2767, which is a member of the NEW solar cycle, cycle 25. Also visible are a few prominences on the East side of the sun. This is a stack of the best 2500 of 5000 frames taken to make the image.

Sun morning of July 23, 2020

Some Dews and Dont's

Last night was another first for me, and this entry is to serve as a reminder of what NOT to do. Yesterday afternoon, we had a brief thunderstorm. Short, but some heavy rain for a few minutes; typical. The sky generally cleared up afterwards, so I decided to try an imaging session. OK, all set up. Time to run the flats for the night, and...

Bullseye!

That's what I got. What should it have looked like, you ask? (Thank you for asking.)

Normal Flat image

I'm not the brightest bulb in the box, but even I can tell something is not right.

After checking everything in the optical train I could think of, and finding nothing amiss, I was left with only the camera itself. I'm loath to remove it, once attached to the scope, just because it changes what the flats correct in the image; ie, a flat is useful for removing “dust donuts” from an image, but only if the camera is in the same orientation for both the flat and image. Removing the camera means wasting time re-shooting flats. But, detach it I did. And, if you paid attention to the title of this entry, you already know what I found...condensation in the camera.

I've been running the camera this morning to see if I can replicate the issue. After half an hour, no condensation. My worry was that the desiccant needed replacing, which is possible, but a pain. According to the instructions, it could need replacing after 3 years; I'm currently at 5 years with out a (known) need for replacement. So, I'm guessing the moral to this story is, don't try imaging after a thunderstorm when the humidity is still 100%. (So how do they do it in Florida?)

The Sun Again

It's hard to believe that the skies have been as cloudy as they have been for so long. But... I guess we do the best with what we are given. In this case, there was an almost clear day for viewing the sun. I shot about 5 hours of a prominence. You never know if it is moving until you process the images later, and in this case, it seems to have been active. Although I recorded images every 2 minutes, the activity was sufficiently slow that processing every tenth image, ie, every 20 minutes real time, is sufficient to show the activity. It's taken me this long to post this just because I actually processed every image, then checked for activity and found that every tenth image was sufficient to show what I wanted to show. It takes a while to process over 130 images, then put them in a format to make into a video. Oh well, finished at last, anyway. Images taken on July 2, 2020.