Very active sun today - July 24th

No sunspots today but still the sun was very active. In Hα however the activity was quit impressive. Using the PST Coronado at least 5 bright "prominence areas" were visible in the afternoon. I tried to capture those on picture but could only realize this afocal one. The picture was edite using CS4. 

Sundog

Very bright sundog seen this evening from Averbode (Belgium).

Yellow sunset.

In the afternoon a heavy thunderstorm luckely missed Averbode and the day ended  into a Yellow sunset. The picture was taken with my Nikon and my Celestron D70 f/400.

New Milestone 1000 Visitors this month

First time ever since the start of my astronomy blog more then 1000 people visited my blog over an one month period. Great achievement!

CalSky.com

If you want to see the ISS or other satellites crossing the moon or suns disk, the website CalSky can help you finding it out. It shows the nearest place where to go for observing the crossing.
See here for the link to the CalSky website.
This website give also other very detailed information and calculations.

Noctilucent Clouds - Use of Radar from Leibniz

Clear sky means also good news for observing noctilucent clouds - without an open sky it's anyway hopeless. The radar of the Leibniz Institute can help to predict your chances, but with last night noctilucent clouds above Averbode the radar did not show much movement.
Find here the link to the Radar and some prints taken the last days.

Sunspots AR 2565 & 2567 B&W

Some more editing of the pictures taken of the sunspots AR 2565 & 2567.  This time pictures are put on black/White and sharpen using unsharp masks. Never thought I would get this great result.