ATT Essen 40 Years - May 10th

Background: On Saturday, May 10, 2025, the 40th "Astronomy and Technology Meeting" (ATT) will take place in Essen. 

Beside the exhibitors the agenda for lectures is available with a lecture on remote astrophotography and
Die aktive Sonne in Foto, Time-Lapse und radioastronomischer Beobachtung by Udo Siepmann.

I'm looking out to attend this annual event. 

SOLAP Report 2024 - Sol'Ex Pro-AM

Florence Cornu from observatoire de Meudon (Paris) send us the SOLAP annual report 2024. This report provides information about the cooperation between amateurs ujsing Sol'Ex (Solar Explorer) and the professional Meudon Observatory, so called Pro-Am, cooperation SOLAP Project.

Currently 37 amateurs are part of the SOLAP of which 30 French and 7 non French. So far, I'm the only Belgian. My contribution is limited as I only started in september of 2024. 

Contribution per person with Ha and Ha2cb images

Some interesting facts from the report :

- EQ6 and AZEQ6 is most used mount

- IMX178 is most used camera; I'm the only one using the IMX290; 

- 72mm telescopes are most used

- Sunscan can not be used due to quality of the images

- Sunchine hours over the last 3 years

Naming of the files changed last year

Halo, Sundogs, Circles and Arcs

The Sun this afternoon with a halo22°, two sundogs, parhelic circle, upper tangent and a circumzenithal arc.

Editing using CS4

Studium Generalé with Prof dr Auke-Pieter Colijn and the XenonXT Project

Since 2017 I have been visiting Maastricht University on a regular basis as part of Studium Generalé. Studium Generalé provides excellent lectures as well as series of lectures that are always given by top professors or professionals.

Last Thursday, March 13, the missing universe was on the agenda by Prof. Dr. Auke-Pieter Colijn. He is a physicist who works as a professor of experimental astrophysics at the univ of Amsterdam and Utrecht. Around 6:30 pm I left for Maastricht and took Helios colleagues Walter and Fernando with me. For Walter it is already the most normal thing in the world, but for Fernando it was his first visit to Studium Generale. This time the lecture took place in the School of Business and Economics and not in the prestigious Minderbroedersberg. We were well on time and easily found a place in the grand auditorium. 

The lecture started with an overview of the size of the universe and how empty it actually is. All the matter we can observe makes up only 4% of our universe. The remaining 96% consists of something we don't know and therefore call dark energy and dark matter.

In Gran Sasso, Italy, at 1500m underground, is the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS). Here deep underground they are looking for WIMPs or weakly interacting massive particles. These particles are possible candidates for dark matter. For the sake of completeness, all other candidates were also discussed.

To find the WIMP particles, a tank was built with 8000 kg of liquid Xenon, the so-called XenonNT project see https://xenonexperiment.org/ When a WIMP particle interacts with xenon, electrons and a photon will be released immediately. The electrons are led by an electric field to the top of the tank where they come into contact with gaseous Xenon and release another photon. The sequential release of two photons over a certain time interval is the characteristic of a WIMP. Despite the fact that the experiment has been working for several years, no dark matter was found.

Observing the Corona with my Sol'Ex

I have been able to observe the corona of the sun several times and this was always during a total solar eclipse. Being able to observe the corona outside of a total eclipse is something completely different and a real challenge. How great would this be to be able to observe the corona from my garden and without totality. According to Christian Buil, this is possible with a Sol'Ex. And so I got to work.

According to Christian Buil, this observation is something for specialists, considered very difficult and even impossible if you don't have the transparency of a high mountain sky. Indeed, the biggest enemy is not the instrument but the diffusion of the atmosphere by aerosols, so that the very faint glow of the corona cannot be seen. In reality, the Sol'Ex principle is an asset, as the spectroheliograph is a very effective natural filter, which makes it possible to isolate the coronal emission lines. It's not an obvious observation, because we need to understand that we need to detect a signal coming from an emission line that alone represents about five billionths of the brightness of the solar disk!

On February 2nd I set up my Sol'Ex and I started looking for the Fe XIV (see photo). The recording was done with my Sol'Ex pro version on a TS TLAPO60/360 and ASI678MM camera. The slit is the generation 2 slit, say 7 microns wide and 6 mm high. I use sharpcap 4 for recording.

To edit my recordings, I used JSolex v2.7.3 and the imagemath module with which I can program edits in Java.

JSolex automatically looks for the most suitable line and from there I start my editing. Specifically, I count how many pixels I am removed from the found line up to the Fe I (5302.30A) line (referred to below as "X") and I apply the following formula :

C=X+p

Ref#1 = X-p

Ref#2= X+2p

Corona lijn = C-(Ref#2+Ref#1)/2

p (pixels) =5

I further process the image obtained in CS4, stretching to such an extent that I find "noise" in the corona. I apply "color range" to it to amplify the "noise".

Discussion

It is not clear to me and certainly whether this is the E-corona. I do know how to find the Fe XIV line (see spectrum) and I can edit it via JSol'Ex. Christian Buil uses a shift of 5 pixels and I'm not sure if I can just apply this given my slightly different setup. Christian uses the first generation slit, 2x2 binning recording, and a ASI178MM camera with 24 micron pixels. I use a different slit, 1x1 binning and the ASI678MM camera with 2 micron pixels. On the other hand, if I use 3 or 4 pixels for the p-value and do the same editing in CS4, I don't find any "noise". This is encouraging and could indicate the presence of the E-Corona, but I remain cautious.

Mars Profiler - Mars Map - Mars Mapper

When observing Mars, this website can be used which structures you imaged or drawed. 

Mars Profiler 

Sun Feb 2 Ha2cb - Continuum

 

Sun on Feb 2, 2025 with a lot of sunspots, as STCE noted a swarm. 
Image made with Sol'Ex pro 2nd GEN slit (7micron) and ASI678MM camera on AZEQ6 mount. 

Software: SharpCap 4, Inti and CS4.

Continuum Line: H-alpha 2cb (Ha2cb) located -24*(2,4/2) pixels or -28 pixels from H-alpha.