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Super-Sol Sunday! Get it? Ok, my brain froze a little while I was out for yet another weekend doing solar astronomy. It was 26 degrees outside with the wind gusting at about 15 miles per hour as I set up my scope in Farley Field in Marlborough, Ct.

After checking Spaceweather.com it looked like a nice sunspot complex 1045 was growing very large, very quickly. See conditions were poor to fair at best do to the jet stream overhead, which helped blow a blizzard yesterday to our south and not hit us.

Here is what I got with my Nikon D300s. This shot is composite of 2 images. One taken for the surface features, and one for the prominences. Combined in Photoshop.

1045 is in the center of the northern hemisphere, and the new 1046 is just making it’s way around the limb of the sun on the upper left.

Hope you enjoy your Super-Sol Sunday!

Here’s the video.

I was traveling down Route 9 in Middletown the other day enroute to a photo assignment when I spotted a sun halo at about 45 degrees in elevation. This one the frist I have seen a in quite a while. I surmize that there was plenty ice crystals in the air from the blizzard that was hitting Baltimore and Washington D.C. to make this visable. Enjoy!

After work I took a quick look at the Clear Sky Clock for my area. It looked pretty good for a few hours this evening. So, I took advantage of the 30 degree temperature and continued astro testing the Nikon D300s camera.

I choose the astrophotographers most favorite target of the winter to shoot tonight. M42 the Orion Nebula and the area around it.

During the evening I tried asa/iso numbers ranging from 400-6400, using an exposure of 30 seconds, with a 300 mm Nikon lens set at f/4.0. The weather was 28 degrees at the times of the exposures, and a slight wind from the southeast. Dark frames were extracted in the camera after the exposure.

Here is the best shot that I came up with. This was done at 3200 asa/iso. Again, only 30 seconds long. Very slight processing in Photoshop. You can just start to see the noise stating to come through. For 30 seconds I think this is a great test of the camera!

Despite the winter storms of this week, today, the last day of January provided me a nice quick view of the sun. With a new sunspot grouping called AR1043 coming around the limb in the northern hemisphere of the sun, I managed to get some video of it. I will post it as soon as I can.

Unexpectedly this month managed to give me several good solar viewing days. Who knows what February will bring.

Here a couple of shots of my set up this afternoon in Marlborough, Ct.

Here is another looking into a 40mm eyepiece at the solar disk.

In a previous posting I mentioned that I had taken some video of sonspot complexes 1041 & 1042.

Here is the result of my efforts with a Meade Electronic Eyepiece and some turbulent atmosphere under some poor seeing conditions. Hey, it was sure nice to get out there and do some solar astronomy in the winter at all! 

It was a rare January Saturday afternnon when you can go out and do some comfortable Solar Observing. There was a slight breeze but crystal clear skies as I set up my solar observing setup in Farley Field in Marlborough, Ct. Within minutes I had not one, but two sunspot complexes with in view. Sunpot areas 1041 and 1042. They were small but had very many sunpot formations with in them. I shot some video of both of them which I will post in the next few days.

While looking at the sky I noticed the moon already in it’s midpoint, and very observable even at 3:00pm.

I took the solar filters off my scope and started to to some daytime lunar observing. Here is a shot I captured of the moon against the deep blue sky.

Later that day with the telescope in the car I went over to one of friends house and surprised the Purcell family with a quick unplanned observing session of the moon. Their two daughters, and their mother Pam had never saw the moon before through a telescope. It was quite the experience for all of them as you could imagine.

Here is my friend Steve holding his daughter Kalie (3) up to the scope. It’s never to young to start observing.

Kalie’s sister Meghan who also just finished looking at the moon ran inside and did her own Lunar Observing sketch which she gave to me as a thank you. Here is her first observing picture. Not bad for 6 years old!

A balmy day of 45 degrees left no doubt that this was a good day to do some solar photography. For January, this was a bonus day of observing in the middle of winter.

After giving solar observers a great show for the past week or so Sunspot complex 1040 is slowly dissapearing in size as it makes it’s way to the western limb of the sun. At one time it was larger than 10 earth diameters.

Beside shooting video, here is a frame grab that I took off the video to show the complex.

A video that I shot last month is now up on the Fire Service Page for your viewing.

Please feel free to check it out.

After the numerous comments and e-mails encouraging me to showcase some of my fire service photographs and stories about them, I have caved in. I will now include a tab on the top of the Home Page of CtCameraEye to direct you to posts dedicated to the Fire Service. Feel free to drop me a quick comment or any memories you might have about what is posted. Also, suggestions are always welcome! Thanks for looking!

Alan

Ok, it’s cold, windy and snowing outside. The perfect day to get out your telescope and do some observing.

No, not the kind of observing we are used to, but how about something closer to home. I did just that today after watching the snow pile up yet again in my yard. But this time was different. There was more than a usual showing of birds all over the yard and I thought I would put in some birding observing time. I counted seven different types of birds feeding. Including this Tufted Titmouse posing for a picture with a potato chip in his mouth. It’s a lot more fun than I thought. So, get out there and feed your feathered friends and do some observing.