Mars Dust Storm

View by Opportunity on the Sky of Mars getting more dusty - Credit NASA

Mars is currently the brightest object in the morning sky but on the planet itself a perfect storm for science is happening. It all started on May 30 and currently the storm is covering a quarter of planet. It's unclear if this storm will grow out to a global storm but what we do know is that an entire family of satellites and rovers are oberving the storm activity very close.

View by Curiosity Credit NASA 

See more on the Mars Weather Website

Spotless Sun in H-Alpha with Solarmax 3

Again a spotless day but the Sun disk is full of action when looking in H-Alpha (Hydrogen Alpha emission line of 656,28 nm). This morning the sky was very transparent and free of clouds. So ideal to rehearse with the Solarmax 3 70/400 <0.05 nm. Visual observation with 8-24mm zoom show different filaments and prominences. Trying the different setting of the scope show some granulation but more practise is needed.
Great to see that both filaments as prominences are visible in one field view. This was not possible with the PST 40 as I needed to move the sundisk around to see the details.

Furthermore I try to take some pictures afocal using the 8-24mm zoom. Best result was achieved with 14mm and camera setting 1/200s and ISO 1600-2000. The picture was edited using CS4. The picture shows the different filaments aswell as the prominences.

Sun in H-Alpha with Solarmax 3

First sunlight with my SolarMax 3. Some small disturbings due to high clouds but what a great view. Even though the sundisk is spotless, different details are visible. A drawing was made and confirmed with data from the Gong netwerk.
My picture is a trial and more training is needed.

Explaining The Heliosphere

The Heliosphere defines one type of boundary of our solar system.

We know the solar wind has a pressure and close to the Sun, the solar wind can easily push the interstellar medium away from the Sun. But further away from the Sun, the pressure from the interstellar medium is strong enough to slow down and eventually stop the flow of solar wind from traveling into its surroundings. The entire area or bubble inside the boundary of the solar system is called the Heliosphere. Scientists believe that the closest parts of the Heliosphere are 90 times farther away than the distance between the Earth and Sun. That's three times as far as Pluto.

Ingredients of the Heliosphere are knows as the Bow Shock, Heliopause, Heliosheat and Terminatin Shock.

Bow Shock
The Bow Shock is formed in front of the Heliosphere, as the Sun moves through the interstellar medium. This can be compared what happens at the prow of a boat. Depending of the speed of the Sun traveling into our galaxy it's either a Bow Shock or Bow Wave.

Heliopause
The area where the solar wind's strenght is no longer great enough to push back the interstellar medium is called the Heliopause. It's is often considered to be the outer border of the solar system.

Termination shock
The area where the speed of the solar wind becomes slower than the speed of sound is called the Termination Shock. 

Heliosheath
The zone between the Termination Shock and the Heliopause is called the Heliosheath.

50 Days to go for the Lunar eclipse

On July 27th, 2018 a Lunar Eclipse can be observed in Belgium and big parts of Europe.

Solar Astrophysics

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The Sun is a facinating object to observe. But how functions our nearest star and what's happening in and outside of the Sun. Hopefully I will find many answers in this new book from Peter Foukal with the title "Solar Astrophysics" .
Once read, I will post a summary of the book.

Jupiter TAL200K ASI224MC

Clear sky yesterday evening but after 23h30 local time start of bad seeing. As from that moment it was impossible to make good pictures of Jupiter. Some time before I was able to make some picutres knowing it was not really dark. Pictures are taken with ASI224MC on TAL200K. Setting of 100ms exposure time for 180s and a Barlow x2 was used. With the Barlow x2 Jupiter became much bigger in the picture making it more easer to sharpen the image. Stacking with AutoStakkert and editing using CS4.