Thursday, June 19, 2025

CaII H Image of the Sun

 




Early this morning around UT5h17 weather conditions were rather good, with good transparancy but fair seeing.
On the east side a huge prominence is visible.


Setting: TSTLAPO80/480, Sol'Ex Pro 2nd Gen slit, ASI678MM
Herschel wedge
Sx/Sy < 1,1 Tilt <0,3°
Software: SharpCap, Inti, CS4, DeNoise AI

Sun H-Alpha and huge prominence

Early this morning around UT5h17 weather conditions were rather good, with good transparancy but fair seeing.
On the east side a huge prominence is visible.

Setting: TSTLAPO80/480, Sol'Ex Pro 2nd Gen slit, ASI678MM
Herschel wedge
Sx/Sy < 1,1 Tilt <0,3°
Software: SharpCap, Inti, CS4, DeNoise AI




Tuesday, June 17, 2025

JASON2025 June 21 & 22, 2025

Next weekend, June 21 and 22, MARS60 is organizing their Journées de l'Astronomie Solaire de l'Oise et du Nord @ Baron (France). My objective is to meet other Sol'Ex users and what's the next level.



Sunday, June 15, 2025

200.000 visitors on my Blog

 

Reaching 200.000 visitors on my blog. Thank you all for reading my blogposts. 





Saturday, June 7, 2025

Sunspot AR4100 third tour AR4055 and 4079

Sunspot AR4100 made his third tour around the Sun. I made images of all the three tours of this Sunspot. At first this was sunspot AR4055 in the beginning of April, on May 1, it was sunspot AR4079 and by end of May it was Sunspot AR4100.







Friday, May 30, 2025

Flare M3.5 captured with Sol'Ex May 30, 2025

First light this morning around UT5h00. The objective was to test my new set up. My Sol'Ex pro 2nd Gen slit was equiped with a new adapter.


 
With this new Omegon adapter, the distance between Sol'Ex and Herschel Wedge is getting closer. As a result:
- more stable configuration of Sol'Ex as 1,25 tube is now amost entirely enclosed.
- getting more back focus; from 1cm to 3cm back focus

During imaging, the spectrum line did light up around sun spot AR4100. This was imaged both in CaIIK and H-Alpha. It was a moderate flare M3.5. See details below:






Setting:
TLAPO80/480 with Sol'Ex Pro 2nd Gen slit and ASI678MM
Herschel Wedge
Tilt <0,6° and Sx/Sy <1,1
Software: SharpCap, Inti, Jsolex, CS4, DeNoise AI









Saturday, May 24, 2025

ATT Essen 2025

My first visit to to ATT Essen, the biggest European Astronomy fair, was back in 2017. I missed some editions during Covid-19 period but attend all others. This year ATT Essen celebrated40 years. Beginning of this year I submitted a couple of pictures and a short text  answerring their request "Wanted: Besucher-Statements für Jubiläumsschrift zum 40. ATT! Einsendungen mit Name und Wohnort erbeten bis 28.02.2025 an karsten.plewnia@sternwarte-essen.de. Awesome to see that my submission was published in their publication which was handed over at the entrance.



on the picture fltr: Pascal, Walter, Jean-Marie, Johan, Jean-Claude


This year only Helios colleague Johan and myself went to ATT Essen. We left very early around 7h15 which resulted in an early arrival in Essen. We parked our car at Parkplatz 1 and started electrical charging. When we arrived at the entrance it was 9h30 with a long waiting row. 


Once inside we first visited the (class)rooms with used equipment. Johan immediately bought  a set of color filters while I was looking for connectors. Around 11AM we split; Johan joined a lecture on optics and I visited the other stands. We met each other after the lecture and took a traditional German meal: Schnitzel and frites. 



Some interesting things to mention :






A modular mount was presented which has some great features. I was also impressed by the PiFinder. A rasperry Pi with camera and software which is placed on your scope (typically dobson) to find your way at the sky. If you don't have a goto.. this is a great support; cost about 400€. I finally bought a ZWO715MC camera for a reduced price. 
During the tour we met some people from Belgium: Philip from Mira, Hugo from Astromarket, Joost from Capella Hoegaarden and Daniel from our own solar chat. With Daniel, I also joined the lecture by dr. Udo Siepmann who shared his experience capturing the sun. 

Selfie with Dr. Udo Siepmann

We left around 5pm, fully satisfied and again a great ATT edition. 





Save the date :





Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Sun May 19 H-Alpha and HeID3

About 90 minutes after sunrise I'm able to observe the Sun with my Sol'Ex. Seeing should be better during these early moments. 

Setting:
TLAPO80/480 with Sol'Ex Pro 2nd Gen Slit and ASI678MM
Herschel Wedge
Tilt <0,5° and Sx/Sy < 1,1
Software: SharpCap, Inti, JSolex and CS4


Imaging H-Alpha en HeI D3





Thursday, May 15, 2025

Sun May 14 in H-Beta, CaIIH and HeID3

The Sun imaged on May 14, 2025 in Helium I D3, CaIIH and H-Beta.

Setting:

TLAPO80/480 with Sol'Ex Pro 2nd Gen Slit an ASI678MM
Herschel Wedge
Tilt <0,5° and Sx/Sy=1,08
Software : SharpCap, Inti, JSolex 3.1.3, CS4






Wednesday, May 14, 2025

The Sun in H-Alpha



The Sun this morning very early at UT5h50, in H-Alpha.




Sunday, May 11, 2025

Sun H-alpha, beta and CaIIH



I re-adjested the collimation of my Sol'Ex. The ressult is a much sharper image. Beside the re-adjustment, seeing and transparency was very good.







Friday, May 9, 2025

The Sun on May 9

This morning, very early about 7h48 (UT5h48), I made some images of the Sun. Tranparency was good and moderate seeing.

Setting:
TLAPO80/480 f/6 with Solex Pro 2nd Gen slit and ASI678MM
Herschel Wedge
Tilt <0,3° and Sx/Sy = 1,1
Software : SharpCap, Inti, Astrosurface, CS4



  

Sunday, May 4, 2025

Sol'Ex May 1 with flare in AR4079

Images of the Sun on May 1, 2025 using my Sol'Ex Pro 2nd Gen Slit. The H-beta shows also a flare in AR4079. I'm also proud of my CaIIH image for which the seeing conditions were very good. This is one of my better CaII image.








Imaging in BaII D2 en MgI B2

How cool is this. I imaged the Barium ion (BaII D2) line at 4554A. I did not expect anything, but it did, with some structure over the entire sun's disk. I seached more in the literature and found that the line is representing the low chromosphere, the same as the MgIb2 line. Thus I imaged the MgIb2 line and compared with the BaII line. Observation: more details in the sunspot, structure is same between Ba and Mg. Interesting is that Ba structure is dark, while the one for Mg is lighter.

According to Olshevsky et al. (2008) and Sütterlin et al. (2001), the core of this line forms at about 700km.







Via a FB post I got feedback from Varadi Nagy Pal on more metal elements which show structure and even faint prominences. For more information see his blog https://csillagtura.ro/
He mentiones Fe, Ni, Sr of which Sol'Ex images are made. I will try to locate them using JSolex Spectrum analyzer.