Solar Imaging Session - October 19, 2014 (Huge AR12192 Sunspot Group!)

The sky this morning is very erratic! Seeing condition can vary from fair to worst in just a few seconds!!! It was a very frustrating imaging session as I not only had to fight with bad seeing condition but also fast moving clouds that tends to test one's patience trying to wait for a good opportunity to capture even a short video clip! There was even a frustrating moment when I gave up the session already after getting a good focus, then clouds rolled in totally. After waiting for a hour, I disassemble my entire setup and brought inside the house then the clouds, suddenly cleared up! Damn! I setup again fro scratch and when I'm done already, its clouded out again! I was only able to get a short clip of a few seconds before I got clouded out again and add insult to injury, our obstruction from our roof adds in into my frustration!!! I thought of calling it a day for this session but clouds is trying their best to taunt me all morning long, it even open a semi large clear sky part near the Sun for me to have another try on the Sun again but I had to move the entire setup to the other corner of our laundry area for me to get some more clearance to image the Sun! I was able to get another clip of the Sun again then got clouded out totally. Sigh! As I was thinking how can I can get a decent image out of these 2 frustrating video clip I made all morning long till 1pm in the afternoon? Guess what? I think I have a decent shot of the AR12192 Sunspot Group after all and it came from the less 10 second shot I made from my first attempt this morning! The rest are too rubbish and frustrating that I delete them off asap to lessen my frustration. From that short clip, I think I got a 2/5 seeing condition image that shows nice faculae as well as nice penumbral structure of the sunspot group. It's the only image I got from a 9:45am-1:00pm session ! :) LOL Better than nothing at all :0

Solar Imaging Session - October 10, 2014

The sky this afternoon is very hazy and seeing condition is even worst!!! I try to view the Sun in Ha with the Double Stacked Coronado PST-Ha and the visual view was really dim! Nevertheless, I still proceeded to try imaging it. As expected it was very difficult to image and all my exposure settings has gone crazy that I'm using a 120fps camera at 10fps in 640x480 mode! That was how bad the haze is under my imaging session. But I still force myself to capture a few images to share, There is a huge faint eruptive prominence near the SE limb near AR12186 Sunspot Group as well as a huge long dark filament near the center of the Sun. Departing AR12182 Sunspot Group is a bit quiet as it near the SW limb. Overall, the session is a learning experience again for me to dealing with double stacked Ha scopes that it is more challenging and demanding that you have a good clear sky to get good results :)

Total Lunar Eclipse Imaging Session - October 8, 2014

The forecasted weather was not very good but ALP President James Kevin Ty and member Alberto Lao proceeded to setup at Albert's residence roof deck which is about 26th floor high. They were joined by GMA7 reporter Katrina Kaye Son and her video crew that evening. James set up his Canon EOS 500D DSLR with Canon EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 IS L lens set at 400mm f/5.6 mounted on top of Vixen Polarie star tracker. Albert on the other hand setup his Sony Nex 6 with AF500mm f/8 mirror lens mounted on Ioptron Star Tracker.The Moon was not visible until around 6:15pm as it faintly show its dim eclipse glow behind a hazy sky background. During that time, the Moon had already entered totality phase. The sky was clear all the way until end of umbra wherein clouds started to cover up the sky again. During totality phase, I was able to locate planet Uranus as well as 2 moderate bright stars WW Piscium and SAO 109563. Overall, the group coverage of the total lunar eclipse was still successful. As they say, despite against all odds, sometimes MIRACLE do happen as they were blessed with good sky under a very bad predicted weather outlook that evening :)

Solar Imaging Session - October 6, 2014 (Testing Double Stacked PST-Ha)

The sky this morning is partly clear but seeing condition is poor. I was able to borrow a Coronado SM40 from my good friend and ALP VP Jett Aguilar to connect it to my Coronado PST-Ha. This is mostly referred to as Double Stacked Coronado PST-Ha. Installing the SM40 in front of the Coronado PST-Ha narrows down the Ha bandwidth from the standard 1 Angstrom to around 0.5 Angstrom which should extract more contrast on surface details such as dark filaments and flares. Drawback is considerable dimming of the image. My initial testing this morning draws a conclusion that it indeed improve my Ha wavelength imaging in terms of enhanced surface details! The western huge hedgerow prominence is still visible this morning while the other large prominences visible yesterday has reduced in size a bit. With the double stacked setup, dark filaments are very contrasty as well as the flares specially on AR12178, 12177 and 12181 Sunspot Groups. I hope to be able to do further testing next weekend. I was also able to do some white light imaging as well but due to bad seeing conditions, images are nevertheless still ok.

Solar Imaging Session - October 5, 2014

The sky around lunchtime is partly clear with some passing clouds. Seeing condition though is very good. There is a huge hedgerow prominence visible in the western limb that is a joy to look at. 2 more large prominences are also visible in the NW and S limb. Several sunspot groups are visible but most interesting are AR12182 and 12178 Sunspot Groups which shows good solar activity inside its core. As I was trying to image the Sun in Ha wavelength in wide shot, clouds started to cover the sky thus I wasn't able to image in white light wavelength :(

Solar Imaging Session - October 3, 2014

I manage to squeeze a short time for me to snap AR12178 Sunspot Group in white light as well as a lone Ha image of the region around AR12179, 12178 and 12181 Sunspot Groups which shows a lot of large dark filaments and solar activities before The Sun got obstructed b the roof. Seeing is good though.

Solar Imaging Session - October 2, 2014

Darn! My morning solar imaging session comes to an end with the Sun already obstructed by the damn tall building in my eastern horizon! That means I can only do solar imaging now on on weekends :( Nevertheless, I was able to setup after lunch at our laundry area with the Sun already past meridian and setting into the back of our house! I will probably have to wait for another 2 months for the Sun to exit the other side of the darn building before I can image again in the early morning :( I quickly setup to try to capture as much solar images that I can. In the end , I manage to only do some Ha wavelength imaging through the Coronado PST-Ha only. Seeing condition is rather poor today but I try to salvage from my solar set. AR12179 and 12178 Sunspot Groups are worth monitoring in the days to come. Also lots of huge dark filaments are visible from the eastern and western quadrants. As for today's prominences, most are small to moderate size only. Because of crunch time in order to squeeze as much images before I get obstructed, I wasn't able to do drift the images more thus Newton rings are again visible. Anyway, I'm just waiting for my T2 tilt adapter to arrive in 2 weeks so that I can forget Newton rings and concentrate on imaging the Sun in Ha wavelength.