Solar Imaging Session - November 1, 2012 (Huge SW Prominence)

I wake up late this morning as I was so tired due to tiredness and stress :( I quickly setup to check out the Sun again and the large SW eruptive prominence visible yesterday as increase and size and height! The SE large eruptive prominence as well as the hige large dark filament beside it has also started to simmer down a bit :( AR11600 Sunspot Group still fire a small bright flare to show itself before exiting the western limb. Rest of the groups are quiet. Once again as expected, seeing condition again worsens and I couldn't get a lock on focus on the sunspot at white light high resolution so had to forgo it as the Sun is about to be obstructed by our house's roof :( I got to image a full disk shot of the Sun in white light before ending my session as I have to prepare to go to cemetery to visit my dad's tomb on All Saint.s Day today :0

Solar Imaging Session - October 31, 2012 (Huge Dark Filaments and Large Eruptive Prominences

It's been almost 27 days that I wasn't able to do any solar observation and imaging and I was glad that I was able to break the dry spell! The sky this morning is fair and seeing condition is good. I started to do Ha solar work and was able to see numerous dark filaments across the solar disk as well as 2 nice large eruptive prominences that can be seen in the SE and SW limb. As I was about to start my white light imaging, clouds started to interfere with my observation and seeing condition worsen but despite this condition, I was able to still snap a full disk solar image as well as a close up of AR11598 Sunspot Group which is not that good as I expected but nevertheless still tolerable despite the bad seeing :( I hope to do better imaging session tomorrow if weather permits.

Deep Sky Imaging Session - October 21, 2012

The sky in the early evening of October 20, 2012 was not bad compared to last October 13-14, 2012. The sky tonight was partly cloudy but one can still see a lot of stars that evening. I tried to test my CCD setup once again so since I plan to image Horsehead Nebula but constellation of Orion is still quite low so I have to wait till it rise at least 35 deg high before I start to do any testing. I mounted the ATIK 16HR CCD camera on my TV-101 refractor on top of a Vixen GPDX mount. Unfortunately, clouds started to interfere past midnight and made a hard downpour till early morning :( But I was able to get a test shot of M42 Orion Nebula using the Green filter through thin passing clouds. The output is not that good but at least I'm happy to get first light on DSO :) Exposure is 2 minutes unguided through the TV-101 refractor at 540mm f/5.4 .

I hope to do more testing on the ccd camera before the next ALP stargazing session next month.

Deep Sky Imaging Session - October 13-14, 2012

Despite a lot of Astro Gremlins (Snapped Power Steering Belt, Resoldering of Battery terminal of polar scope, etc) that haunt my imaging session trip to Caliraya, Laguna last October 13, 2012 with some members of the Astronomical League of the Philippines (ALP). I initially plan to do some deep sky object imaging with the ATIK 16HR CCD setup with my TV-101 refractor on GP-DX mount but the soil on the site keeps sinking bit by bit so I had a hard time getting decent images with the setup so I used my alternate imaging gear with the Canon EOS 500D DSLR with Canon EF100-400mm f.4.5-5.6 IS L lens on Kenko Sky Memo-R tracker instead which gives me a better imaging session that evening. The sky was almost 80% clear but very heavy dewing with an average temperature of around 21 deg C with 93% humidity so I have to use the dew heater at Max whole session. I was able to do some imaging on M45 Pleiades star cluster, M42 Great Orion Nebula, Comet 168/P Hegenrother. I ended the imaging session with the capture of the waning thin crescent Moon as well as earthshine to cap the successful imaging session. All of us were happy on the outcome of the weather that evening and we look forward to doing another imaging session this weekend and I hope to be able to finally get good results on my CCD imaging :)

Astronomer's Frustration on Cloudy Weather !!!

I would like to share an animated cartoon depicting our frustration on our cloudy weather. I got to get another copy of this animation from Damian Allis after i lost my copy way back in 2007. Hope it will brighten up our day despite our frustrating bad weather :) LOL

If the animation doesn't work, try downloading the gif file and play it on your computer :)

Solar Imaging Session - October 4, 2012

The sky this morning is partly hazy and seeing is not good. But I'm still glad nevertheless that I was able to see the Sun after a long spell. I started out with imaging the Sun through white light on the 3 moderate sized sunspot groups designated AR11579, AR11582 & AR11585 Sunspot Groups. Unfortunately, after imaging the 4 groups, clouds started to cover the sky and I waited till around 8:45am before I packed up to head for work. Hope to be able to image the Sun again tomorrow.......