had a rare warm summer night with clear skies and decent seeing. unfortunately my mount is on the fritz, so i was unable to get out the big scope, but had a nice session with my C8 cruising the summer sky, then finished off imaging saturn and jupiter which just happen to have the GRS in view:
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| Jupiter 9/4/22 07:00 UTC click image for large size |
It's been a while since i've imaged saturn, the ring tilt is really decreasing. better view of the globe, north pole difficult:
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| Saturn 9/4/22 07:15 UTC |
some models predict all the colors of the rainbow can be detected at the edges of an eclipsed moon. here's an image at the end of the total eclipse with the color saturation boosted to bring out the color:
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| 5/15/22 lunar eclipse color saturation boosted |
A discussion on the cloudy nights forum covers it. There are 3 phenomenon leading to color on the eclipsed moon:
1. preferential scattering of shorter wavelength light as it passes through the earth's atmosphere (red sunset effect).
2. atmospheric refraction of light (prism effect).
3. preferential absorption of red light by ozone in the upper atmosphere (blue filter effect).
The 5/15/22 lunar eclipse began with the partially eclipsed moon rising during full daylight--it being May:
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| full moon rising |
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| eclipsed moon rising |
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| partially eclipsed moon rising in the shadow of the earth, opposite the set sun |
Here's an attempt at the progressive eclipse:
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| rising lunar eclipse sequence |
And a star aligned view of the second half of the eclipse, showing part of the earth's shadow (thanks dave):
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| Eclipse end, star aligned. |
At the end of the eclipse the "blood red" moon had a prominent turquoise stripe. Thought to be due to ozone in the upper atmosphere blocking red light.
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| blue stripe at eclipse end (no saturation boost) |
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| star trails 5/6-7/22 |
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| star trails around the north star, polaris (short arc) |
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| Meteor? 5/7/22 ~01:34 PDT (north upper left) |
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| Cosmos 1980 rocket pass 5/7/22 |
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| Meteor or Cosmos 1980 rocket pass? |
a nice set of sunspots were on display the weekend of 4/23/22. Here's an animation comparing two views: a traditional "broad band" view showing the spots visible with neutral filter, and a view with a hydrogen alpha (Ha) filter showing ionized hydrogen plasma in dancing magnetic fields above the visual surface.
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| Sun WL vs Ha 2/23/22 22:07 UTC |
while i generally find the Ha view more interesting, it tends to mask the detail of the sunspots as well as the subtle "granules" on the surface of the sun.
the visual surface of the sun is called the photosphere, while the Ha/plasma layer is called the chromosphere as hydrogen plasma emits mostly red light.
Here's a composite Ha view combining a surface image with a much brighter image showing the prominences projecting off the disk edge:
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| Sun Ha Composite 2/23/22 |
Here's a small animation of one of the prominences over 4 minutes:
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| Prominence 4/23/22 22:43-22:47 UTC |
another of surface filaments between the sunspots no flares :(
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| Prominence 4/23/22 22:29-22:37 UTC |
next day i pulled out a big scope for higher resolution views of the spots, but the seeing wouldn't really support the magnification
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| Sun broad band 4/24/22 22:18 UTC |
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| Sun broad band 4/24/22 22:25 UTC |
Imaging details:
I don't usually post others' work, but I sort of collaborated:
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| StormyStarry Night |
Notice anything unusual about the sky?
The sky is not filled with van Gogh's stars, but rather swirling storm clouds on jupiter's north pole captured by the juno mission. The foreground is my daughter's rendition of van Gogh's Starry Night. After seeing this awesome flyby of jupiter captured by the Juno space craft, my brother commented that the clouds were reminiscent of Starry Night. So I took a picture of my daughter's painting, a screen shot of the NASA flyby and combined the two in photoshop.
Here's her original a la van Gogh:
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| Starry Night by Alice circa 8th grade |
https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/guidelines/index.html
