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.

Computer test

Your computer, that is.

This morning, June 19, 2020, I imaged the sun.

Prominence on western edge of sun this morning.

What you are seeing is a prominence on the western edge of the sun. (I think it is the northwest, but I get easily confused with my solar scope.) At any rate, this prominence is sufficiently well positioned to make me believe this is the area above sunspot AR2765, which is the sunspot imaged below (on the 13^th, the day I actually imaged it. I published the photo later, after processing.). Well, I decided to see if I could merge the two images to see how well they lined up.

Composite of 6/19 and  6/13.

What do you think? The image from today is black and white, and might be difficult to see as the separate image that it is pasted on top of the color image from the 13^th. Hence, the test of you computer to see if you see both the sunspot and the prominence. Personally, I think the prominence is from the sunspot. In other words, if we could have seen the sunspot from the side, like we can today, it would have looked much like the prominence image of today.

Play Time

I've decided on another imaging “campaign,” this time being the objects in the Caldwell catalog that are visible from my northern latitude. As with most catalogs, there is much crossover between them. The Caldwell catalog consists of 109 objects. I have filtered out objects below -39 degrees declination (can't see them) and of the objects left (I had already imaged some NGCs while doing the Herschel list), I have already imaged all but 25; at least at the start of this endeavor I needed 25. Since the start, I have imaged 3 more. One of those images proved to be a little more interesting than the others, for a reason that I hope will become obvious. It's C35.

C35. OK, the galaxy is just to the LEFT of center.

Although the target is a galaxy in the middle of the picture, which is actually hard to spot because it's an elliptical and looks very star-like, the target is not what's interesting. It's everything else.

C35 with some other objects identified.

The program ASTAP has supplied the information in this image, and the next one, showing what's identifiable in the image. That's quite a lot! But wait, there's more!!

OK, that A LOT!

Asking ASTAP to annotate “deeper” showed this! There's so much there, I can't really see exactly how much I've managed to actually capture, but I think it's a lot.

Moving on. While starting this venture, I missed one target, C61, and had to come back to it the next night. Neither night was exactly clear, but both were fair. At any rate, instead of C61 the first night, I went to the open cluster that looks like a globular, M4.

M4

Not too bad, considering the amount of clouds around.

Finally, I experimented with some Barlow lenses to see their effect. The target was the sun. Seeing is always a big problem for imaging the sun, but I wanted to know if better resolution is really visible with that scope. Well, you can decide for yourself; here are images of a sunspot and a few prominences, false colored, of course.

One of the first sunspots of the new cycle 25. 2x Barlow used

And a prominence  below the sunspot. 2x Barlow.

Same sunspot as above. 3x Barlow.

Following a Prominence

For the last 3 days, I have been following a prominence on the eastern limb of the sun. I think 2 things are happening; the prominence is changing and it is rotating into view. I know of no easy to tell which is having the greater impact on what we see. I'm hoping it will present on the surface of the sun in a few days. Unless something terribly wrong occurs, it will be cloudy and I will miss it's appearance. You can follow the last 3 days below; dates under the picture. The last image is just for any astrophotographers that might be reading. AutoStakkert 3 produces and unusual artifact, circled. I can't find any evidence that it appears in the original data and have no explanation for how it got there. Ideas anyone? All images except last one are composite of surface and prominence.

May 31, 2020

June 1, 2020

June 2, 2020

Weird artifact produced by AutoStakkert on June 2 data.

And a Last

On the night of May 30, 2020 I finished imaging the Herschel 400 list by getting an image of the somewhat unimpressive galaxy NGC 2787. Unfortunately, the sky had a fair amount of high cloudiness, which appears to be a permanent condition, as well as a just past first quarter moon. Nevertheless. I was able to pull out the image from the muk, at least enough to definitely say I got it. I used both my traditional method of confirming the target, which is a comparison to star charts, and using ASTAP to confirm the target by plate solving. By completing this project, I now have at least 500, possibly up to 600 galaxies, star cluster, and nebulas imaged. Not too bad for an old man with limited talent and equipment. At least, I think so.

A Particularly Good Link

While looking around the internet I found what I think is a particularly good, readable paper about solar flares, solar radiation and it's effect on radio communications, including GPS. Since I have photographed a solar flare, see below May 13^th entry in particular, I thought an explanation would be interesting. I certainly found it so. I hope you enjoy.

Link to explanation of a solar flare. Opens in new window. 

A First

I have been trying to image M61 as often as possible since I found out there was a supernova in it. The reason: I want to see if I can follow it (the supernova) long enough to see the fading on the supernova. In and of itself, this would be a first. However, the first I'm actually referring to in this case is the use of the program ASTAP. This program plate solves the image, meaning it finds where in space you had the telescope pointed and what you have imaged. In this case, I'm using it to positively identify M61, but more importantly, I'm using it's photometry function to determine the brightness of the supernova. Brightness is measured in magnitudes in astronomy. I have had only 2 “clear” nights to image M61, so I have only 2 data points. The first image is below (May 12^th entry, image taken on the 1th), where I show the supernova. The supernova on that May 11^th image measured magnitude 14.5, approximately. As of May 23, it was “down” to magnitude 14.7, approximately. In stellar magnitudes, the larger the number, the dimmer the object, in this case an exploded star. Two tenths of a magnitude doesn't really show in an image, especially one that has been downsampled for the internet, so, I won't show the most recent image. At least I don't think I will now. If I get very few images (and since we're getting rain or clouds a week at a time, that might be what happens), I might come back to show this one. Let's see what the weather does.