I’ve had a bit of an upgrade on the Solar scope front. Despite the 150mm aperture the 80mm glass solar filter was stopping the scope to the point, where any magnification above 50X turned the view to a blurry mush. With my current selection eyepieces, I was only able to use some pretty horrible – and very old- Meade 4000 series Plossls in the 26mm to 40mm range. The most obvious way to see…
A bit more Solar
The only good thing to come out of this continuous bout of hot weather and a declared drought is that apparently it has been clear every night for over a week now. While that is fine for my fellow deep sky imager friends, it hasn’t been of any use to me as my own observatory has been decommissioned pending a possible rebuild next year. The only astronomy I’m doing at the moment is variable…
A bit of Solar
With all the really nice weather we have been having lately, this was a good opportunity to get out with the scope and do a little solar observing and drawing. Rather than just concentrate on one single highly detailed drawing, I wanted to try doing a simple sketch every day, for as many days as the weather would allow. I did try this a few years back and quite enjoyed the experience, so if…
Solar Projection Box
Still too light at night for deep sky stuff, but as the Sun has been shining almost every day for the last few weeks, I’ve been able to continue concentrating on some Solar observing work. My previous attempts at drawing Sunspot detail were OK, but positioning isn’t particularly accurate. I remember seeing a Solar Projection box being used at the Winchester Weekend a few years ago and was impressed at how simple it would be to…
Observing Session: A Week of Solar Sketching 21-27, June
A discussion at our last astronomy club meeting had me thinking it would be fun to try sketching the Sun over a period of time. As luck would have it, I had made a sketch earlier that afternoon, so decided to give it a go for a week. All observations were made using the TMB 80 refractor and a Delos 10mm eyepiece @ 48x. I did try using the R.C but found the TMB’s image…
Observing Session: 14, June
I’m really pissed off at the moment! For the last 10 days or so, we’ve had a pretty good streak of reasonably clear skies. The big problem is that by the time it’s dark enough – about midnight – I’m so pooped that my bed is a more attractive proposition than the observatory 🙁 Even if I wasn’t, the full Moon blazing away, killed any faint glimmer of enthusiasm that I could muster 🙁…