For the first time in years we have a sunspot group that is visible to the (shielded) naked eye. AR1339 is 3 times wider than the Earth and a whopping 10 times longer. See attached photo taken in Galway on Saturday afternoon. No aurora warnings as of yet but the NOAA are estimating a 70% chance of M Class solar flares and 10% of an X class event.
Image after the break - note the size of the Earth in comparison to the group!
Taken in early September with a modded 450D. There was a short clear spell this night so I rushed out with mount and camera, used a 17-55 f2.8 @ f3.5. Completely out of practice though so I hadn't realised how poor my focus was. Reducing the image to this size helped though. Stacked in Deep Space Stacker and processed in Photoshop. I found getting rid of the gradients in the image particularly challenging. Not something I've come across on my other images, but this is a FAR wider view so I should have expected this. Guess I should have used the Astronomik CLS Clip filter I had on the shelf, D'oh!
The 3 brighter stars are Altair, Vega and Deneb.
Come on clear skies, I want to try again!
It's been some time since I posted. We've had more than 2 months straight months of cloudy nights with a couple of gaps on 3 nights. Two of these produced some lovely NLCs. Here's a shot from Annaghkeen, Headford at about 1:30 am I would guess.
The clouds are the highest in our atmosphere at around 80KMs up in the Mesosphere. The phenomenon is pretty rare and usually only occurs in the summer months at certain latitudes where we have a very prolonged twighlight - the sunlight is reflecting off these ice particles from below.
Click the first image to display a larger version.
or click on play to view the timelapse here:
Large solar prom from the 23rd March 2011. My first time taking the wee 40mm PST out in ages so seeing proms this large was a nice surprise.
For my sins I used the Astrotrak and it took AGES to get everything aligned perfectly; the image was taken at f25 so every slight movement caused a large jump at the viewfinder. Next time I'll use the asgt when imaging, just for sanity's sake. Still it's impressive that the wee astrotrak could do this and it is still great for visual solar observing.
About 1300 frames in registax and then processed in PS.
PST with mono toucam on an Astrotrak tt320x.
Think this is big though. Have a look at shots from the 20th on Spaceweather here.
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