The Sun 18-1-09 First imaging session since Boxing Day!

The weather has been appalling for solar observation over the last three weeks and although I managed to sketch some details on a couple of days, imaging has been impossible. This morning was clear and cold though with no clouds so I set up early. The seeing was below average but despite this there was some decent detail in the small prominences on show and there was also a small active region in the north east which appears to be unnumbered even though it clearly had spots visible yesterday.

The Sun 26-12-08 - Boxing Day Sun is Active!

This was the first clear day of the Christmas holiday. It started cloudy and unpromising, but got progressively clearer from the east during late morning. After a walk along the canal to exercise the dog and shift some of the Christmas dinner excess I set up at 12.30 just as the sun was clearing the neighbours conservatory roof. At this time of the year with the sun so low in the south I have just an hour and a half window where I can image the sun before it dips into trees after clearing the neighbours buildings.

The wide arc of closely spaced arch prominences in the north east was still putting on a fine show with some amazing fine detail. There was another sizeable but faint complex of prominences in the SE and NW. A small active region could be seen right on the SE limb, this is possibly AR1009 forming. North to right and East at top in the following images....

The Sun 7-12-08

Pretty much a repeat of yesterdays activity with the main prominence arches still visible in the NE together with the dark surface filament. Much better visibility today and the detail in the proms is sharper.

The Sun 6-12-08

Frequently terrible seeing today meant that close up images of the prominences turned out less sharp. The sun struggles to clear the low altitude murk in our atmosphere at this time of year and this has a great impact on the quality of the final image. There was an impressive arch in the NE today with a fine dark filament on the limb immediately north of it. Lesser prominences elsewhere and most of those in the east.

Lunar Occultation of Venus and Conjunction too!

At 15.48UT Venus was occulted by the moon low in the south. I missed the start of the occultation while I was at work, but the weather was cloudy at the time so it was not visible. I left work 16.45, looked up and was amazed to see the thin crescent moon and Jupiter clearly on display with Venus hidden by the moons disk. I raced home to try and catch Venus appearing on the western side of the moon at 17.17UT. I was very lucky to catch Venus appearing again right on the edge of the moon, a beautiful sight! The trio of Jupiter, Venus and the Moon were all very close in conjunction and made a superb image. You can see two of Jupiter's moons top right either side of Jupiter. Canon 350D, Tamron 70-300 zoom, Canon 18-55 zoom. ISO 200, 4 secs.

Comet C/2006 W3/Christensen 21.13UT

This comet and C/2006 OF2/Broughton are the two brightest comets available for imaging at the moment at magnitude 10. I decided to try Christensen as it was well placed directly above the house near the constellation Cepheus. The evening looked good to start with, cold and clear skies all around. I was set up by 8.10UT with the Canon 350D and Equinox ED80 setup. I had intended on taking an hours worth of images, but had forgotten the intricacies of setting up the dastardly piece of Chinese gadgetry that is the timer remote release. Having failed to remember NOT to use the numbering sequence, but instead set the number of exposures to infinity I happily left the whole setup whirring away and returned to find it had only taken 12x 1 minute exposures - AAAAARRGH !!! Fortunately cloud had rolled in anyway so I would have been foiled by the atmosphere in any case. Thinking it was a waste of time I ran the 12 images through DeepSky Stacker to see what showed up and to my amazement there was a tiny fuzzy green blob sitting amongst a rich starfield!!! Green fuzzy visible just to the left of centre........

Cropped version - comet at centre

Conjunction of Venus and Jupiter

This was a trial run in advance of the highly anticipated conjunction of the moon, Venus and Jupiter in the early evening sky on Monday 1st December at around 5pm. I wanted to try and capture the planets reflected in the canal water and just about managed it before the canal was plunged into darkness. Jupiter at top and Venus below. Canon 350D, ISO 400, 8 seconds.