Solar Imaging Session - April 4, 2013

The sky this morning is clear and seeing condition is good. AR11711 Sunspot Group is very photogenic and a joy to look at as well as the huge dark filament near the NW limb. There is also a nice group of eruptive prominences in the NE and NW limbs.

Solar Imaging Session - April 3, 2013

The sky this morning is clear but seeing is poor :( The 2 huge eruptive prominences on the northern limb as well as eastern limb are all gone now. But there are still several nice large eruptive prominences scattered around the Sun's limb. There is a nice large twisting long dark filament surrounding the AR11711 Sunspot Group. The huge large twisted eruptive prominence near the AR11704 Sunspot Group in still very prominent. I was again able to image large AR11711 Sunspot Group in white light but image is not that good due to poor seeing. I hope seeing gets better again tomorrow.

Solar Imaging Session - April 2, 2013 ( 2 Huge Prominences & Large AR11711 Sunspot Group ! )

The sky this morning is clear and seeing condition is surprisingly very good. AR11711 Sunspot Group is getting a bit photogenic as it is turning a bit away from the Wilson Effect. There are 2 huge eruptive prominences that are visible on the Sun's limb. The northern eruptive prominence is getting even larger than yesterday and displays lots of filamentary structure as well as penumbral details. Another huge fainter ejection prominence can be seen on the eastern limb near AR11711 Sunspot Group. There is also a beautiful long twisted large dark filament that is also very photogenic and can be seen in the NW quadrant. I attempted to do white light high resolution on AR11711 Sunspot Group again but is frustrated once again by bad seeing :( I hope to get better image of this large group in the days to come.

Solar Imaging Session - April 1, 2013 ( 2 Huge Prominences & Large AR11711 Sunspot Group ! )

The sky this morning is clear but seeing condition is once again poor. AR11711 Sunspot Group is getting a bit photogenic as it is turning a bit away from the Wilson Effect. There are 2 huge eruptive prominences that are visible on the Sun's limb. The northern eruptive prominence is getting larger and very beautiful. Another huge fainter ejection prominence can be seen on the eastern limb near AR11711 Sunspot Group. There is also a beautiful long twisted large dark filament that is also very photogenic and can be seen in the NW quadrant. I attempted to do white light high resolution on AR11711 Sunspot Group again but is frustrated once again by bad seeing :( I hope to get better image of this large group in the days to come.

Solar Imaging Session - March 31, 2013 (Huge Eruptive Prominence & AR11711 Sunspot Group !!!)

The sky this morning is clear but seeing condition is not good. There is a huge northern eruptive prominences as well as 2 huge long dark filaments also on the northern hemisphere. A new large sunspot group is emerging from the eastern limb that might be designated AR11711 Sunspot Group in the days to come. Another nice group AR11704 Sunspot Group can be seen on the NW quadrant. I was also able to do a white light high resolution shot of AR11711 Sunspot Group but the image is not that good due to poor seeing but one can see from the image that this is a large group and will show more prominently in the days to come after it come around the Wilson Effect.

Spica Lunar Occultation - March 28, 2013

With my eastern low horizon getting obstructed by tall building, I went to fellow ALPer Alberto Lao's residence to observe with him the Spica Occultation event that will be visible on March 28, 2013. We observe at his residence's roof deck which has a clear eastern horizon. I set up my Canon EOS 500D DSLR with Canon EF100-400mm f.4.5-5.6 IS L Lens set at 400mm f/5.6 on Vixen Polarie Star Tracker. We were able to observe both Ingress and Egress event which happened at 20:49:30 (12:49:30 UT) and 21:53:08 (13:53:08 UT) respectively. With the need to overexposed the Full Moon to compensate on about 10 magnitude difference, I opted to do HDR composite image to maintain the Moon's lunar surface features. We were also joined by my astro kid son KC who won't missed a special astro event like this :)

Solar Imaging Session - March 28, 2013 (Numerous Huge Prominences!)

The sky this morning is clear and finally after more than 38 days of non solar imaging and observation session, I was quite excited again and started to setup my solar imaging setup from scratch as I had dismantle the system in lieu of my several deep sky imaging session of of town trips. Oh well, my old friend Sol didn't disappoint me this morning as I was greeted with several huge prominences that are visible around the Sun's disk. Only 2 small sunspot groups are visible on the disk which are AR11704 and 11705 Sunspot Groups. There are also several numerous huge long dark filaments visible on the northern limb of the Sun.