Sunday Sunshine - 30th August

[marktownley]

Hi Everyone,

After a couple of weeks away from the world on my boat, I woke on Sunday morning to deep blue skies. The northerly airflow isn't normally good for my seeing, but my recently installed observing pad at the top of my garden maximises sun time and I was observing by 8.30am. I started off with CaK at 100mm, and as I suspected the seeing was borderline for the aperture and wavelength, however, running 10 x 4000 frame files meant there was always going to be a best image in the run.

The plage is at higher latitudes, and is cycle 25, it just hasn't got the field strength to make spots unfortunately, but is a sign the new solar cycle is underway. Taken with the 100mm Tal Refractor at f28 with the Airylab telecentric, homebrew CaK filter and the IMX174 camera.

CaK-Close-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

CaK-Close-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Dropping the scope down to 60mm, and loosing the telecentric gives me f16 at the filter and chip for the full disk, which gives a good perspective about the size of this patch of plage.

CaK-FD-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

CaK-FD-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Knowing the seeing wasn't up to the HaT, I opted for the 118mm scope at f28 with the Quark for a scout around. Firstly the region of plage, and in Ha, it's associated filaments:

Ha-SS-wide-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Ha-SS-wide-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

This setup is better for proms than surface IMHO, and there were a few to go at around the limb.

prom-1 by Mark Townley, on Flickr

prom-2 by Mark Townley, on Flickr

prom-3 by Mark Townley, on Flickr

However the setup that is rapidly becoming a favourite for imaging in medium resolution is my SM90, Airylab 2.8x telecentric and the Quark etalon, gives me nice contrast and is usable in all but the worst of conditions.

Ha-DS-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Ha-DS-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Hoping activity picks up, all the signs are there!

Clear skies!

Mark

[EGRAY_OBSERVATORY]

Oh yes Mark !
Some well fab images showing the necessary detail.
I was a tad-surprised that the plage-region has not produced more than your images are showing, but with the amount of prominence-activity "over the border" - hopefully there will be something extra for us.

Weather here in S.E.England today - just not what the doctor ordered for imaging...

Thanks for sharing

Regards
Terry

[Montana]

A beautiful set Mark, especially the proms they bring back some lovely memories of Sunday morning I too was very surprised at how far the Sun has dropped away, the season is drawing to close very quickly and seems accelerating towards the equinox. We just need some more sunshine for September as August has been appalling.

Alexandra

[JochenM]

Good to have you back, Mark. Getting away from it all for a while can be quite liberating.

Very nice set of images there (especially the CaK). I hope some of those clear patches make their way over here soon enough (has been downright sad lately).

[DeepSolar64]

Mark,
Excellent work on all of them. I especially like the full disc CaK images and the last two which show those NE filaments so well.

James

[Carbon60]

Looks like you had a busy and productive session, Mark. That’s a beautiful set of images.

A week on the canal sounds idyllic. A really nice break ahead of a return to the classroom.

Stu.

[marktownley]

Thanks everyone for the comments and likes!

[ffellah]

Excellent, very clean results, Mark. The Ha is top. Nice combination of scope, telecentric and etalon. You always find new ways of getting it done.

Franco

[AJamesB]

Fantastic, love the detail! Great processing as always.