Tuesday, December 23, 2014

A late contribution from December 22

I was fortunate as well and caught a break from the consistent cloud cover I have been experiencing up here lately . My day was fairly clear and I was luckier than Bill because there was no wind . Slim pickens this time of year for us but our sky's will steadily improve now that we are past the winter solstice . Hope you are enjoying what we are able to provide .  Mike


AR 2241 & 2242 and active area


A closer look at the activity




Monday, December 22, 2014

It has been cloudy, gloomy and rainy here for many days.  Today the sky opened up some and there was the sun.  I set up to image and then the wind ramped up to 17 MPH but I gave it a go anyway.  Hopefully there will be several useable images.  They probably will tend to be grainy as I had to use settings to enable higher frame rates to help compensate for the shaking.  Bill

AR2241 and AR2242.  Disappearing around the limb at the locations of the proms are AR2225 and AR2237. -  DMK-41 / Barlow



AR2245 and AR2246 -


AR22442 (Left of center.) -  DMK-21 / No Barlow


AR2241 and AR2242.  -  DMK-41 / Barlow (Wind speed had slowed.)




Sunday, December 14, 2014

The sun god forgave me for my screw up yesterday and I was given another clear day to image.  ;-)  Toward the end of the session the sky started boiling though.  The sun is within a couple of days of the lowest that it goes in the sky and that is a lot of extra atmoshere to shoot through so I guess I'm luck that it was a good as it was today.  These images shouldn't be much different from yesterday's images although I haven't compared them at this point.  In the winter I will take what I can get.  :-)

AR2235, 37, 42 -



AR2230 -



AR2235 - AR2236- AR2238 -


The big prom was still there (Bad sky condition when this was taken with the DMK-21 and 2.5 Powermate.) -


AR2237, 41 & 42 with the prom -



AR2230 and AR2234 -




Saturday, December 13, 2014

First a big thanks to Mike for posting images on the blog during some challenging winter weather.  I was able to get out today finally and I had several videos to process.  Due to an unfortunate 'wrong' click i managed to lose all of my videos.  Fortunately I was able to recover over a dozen of them and I hope to have some descent ones to post.  I did lose a few that i was really looking forward to processing.

Here are a couple starting with AR2235, 37, 41 & 42 -





The big prom of the day.  I believe that I have lost my other prom shots. (DMK-21) -

 

AR2230 -




Another prom using the DMK-21 -


Sun again ! A few Images from Dec 12 2014

Another challenging day of imaging . The sky started out fairly clear but the thin clouds started to move in shortly after I started . The native focal length images were not too bad but the closer images were fuzzy due to the inconsistent sky and atmosphere . Looking forward to a nice crisp clear day that will allow me to push  this DS mod to it's limits .





                                                The fuzzy barlow shots , first AR 2331


                                                                           AR 2234


                                                                                AR 2237


Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Solar Images from Dec 7 2014

I had a number of things working against me when I did these .  The sun nearing the winter solstice presents its own atmospheric issues . Also take into account that I have not had much time with my double stacked mod so I am still getting used to using it . The third issue I had was that I had to replace my laptop and had to reload all of the capture and processing software and there was and still are some glitches to overcome .
 These are the results of the December 7 shoot , the sky was fairly clear when I started to set up but was  hazing up by the time I was shooting . Not one of my best efforts but something to break up the long cloudy spells we have had lately .










Saturday, November 22, 2014

Solar Activity from Nov 21 2014

Imaging opportunities have been few and far between for us lately . Yesterday the sky was reasonably clear so I was able to grab some of the action . I started out with my double stacked Skywatcher mod and the sky looked pretty steady so I later mounted the 150mm mod to get a bit more detail . I missed the big AR 2209 last time around but was pleased to have caught it this time .

                                       First some double stacked shots with the Skywatcher

                                                      AR 2209 and surrounding activity


                                     The new Kid on the block , AR 2216 coming around the limb


                                                               AR 2209 DS with 2x




AR 2216 



Now some shots from the 150mm Istar Mod




150mm Istar at 2x






Proms and filaments to finish this session off , hope you enjoy them !