Have you ever wanted to learn the night sky?
Join Noeleen from the Southern Astronomical Society to see how easy it is to find the constellations, planets and other beautiful celestial objects in the night sky, even from your own back garden.
 
Please scan the QR code on the poster below to book or go to GC Libraries What’s on at:
https://www.goldcoast.qld.gov.au/libraries/Whats-on?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D160827310

Noeleen Lowndes is the former president of the Southern Astronomical Society on the Gold Coast and is now a lifetime member. She has actively been involved with astronomy and space education for over 25 years and has supported Gold Coast Libraries with astronomy events since 2003.
 
Noeleen has been a member with NASA’s Saturn Observation Campaign (SOC) for the past 20 years where she educates the public on NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn, then shows the real planet through her large telescope to everyone’s delight.

There was a sprinkling of small Sunspots all over the surface of the Sun late yesterday afternoon at 4pm. I’ve also taken some (Ha) images with my Lunt solar scope and will post soon)
 
This image was taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tamron 18-400mm lens with a 2x teleconverter attached making a focal length of 1280mm. The lens was fitted with a glass solar filter for safe imaging of the Sun.
 
DANGER: Please do not look at the Sun with your camera lens or telescope without a properly fitted solar filter on the objective!
 
Twenty images were captured with an exposure time of 1/400th second and ISO 200, then they were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS.

I finally got a break this afternoon from the rainy, cloudy and windy weather to take some images of this huge sunspot group AR 2936. There is also quite a bit of activity on the eastern limb, so it looks like more exciting sunspots to come :-)

We are away at the moment at Lennox Heads in NSW and I don’t have a telescope with me so I’ve used my camera and lens setup to take a picture of the Sun. Most importantly, I have a glass solar filter fitted to the end of the lens for safe imaging of the solar surface!

DANGER…. Please do not look at the Sun without a solar filter!

Images taken on the 31st January 2022 with just a Canon 70D camera and a Canon 100-400mm lens with a 2x tele-converter attached, making a focal length of 1280mm.
Twenty images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in Photoshop.

​It finally cleared long enough to quickly set up the telescope and take some pictures of these two large Sunspot groups AR 2924 & AR 2924. On the eastern limb another sunspot could be seen developing now named AR 2927…so more activity coming our way :-)
 
The Sun is firing up and becoming more active there are hardly any days now where there are no sunspots or activity on the solar surface.
 
Please go to Spaceweather.com if you are interested in solar activity and seeing images taken of the Sun and other astronomy objects at:
https://www.spaceweather.com
 
My Images were taken with a 127mm refractor telescope with a glass solar filter attached and a Canon 700DSLR camera with a 2x Barlow lens. Twenty images were captured with an exposure of 1/400th seconds and ISO 400; the images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.

A short video taken with the Canon 700D to show how detailed and large these sunspots really were,
taken with my 127mm refractor telescope, Noeleen :-)

The images above were taken with my 127mm North Group apochromatic refractor telescope with a ZWO ASI120 MC-S (Colour) Planetary camera attached.

The Sun has been very active lately with many sunspots showing up on its surface but today for the first time in a long time its solar surface spotless, so I just had to take a picture :-)
 
Image taken with my Canon 70D camera and a Canon 100-400mm lens with a 2x teleconverter attached making a focal length of 1280mm.  Twenty images were captured with an exposure of 1/500th second and ISO100, images were stacked in RegiStak6 and processed in PS CS4.
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Movie taken with Canon 70D camera on movie mode (I said 15th instead of 16th of September…Oops)

The Sun has these incredibly active sunspot groups on its surface numbered AR2866 & AR2868 with another sunspot developing not far away numbered AR2869.
The two smaller sunspots nearing the western limb are AR2863 & AR2865.
 
I’m at my Stardust Observatory this weekend and just had to take some images of these wonderful active regions on the solar surface  :-)

My image was taken with a Canon 70D camera & Canon 100-400mm lens with 2x teleconverter = 1280mm focal length with solar filter attached…. The exposure was 1/500th second and ISO100, 20 images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PSCS4.

Movie taken with my Canon 70D and Canon 100-400mm lens plus 2x teleconverter = Focal length 1280mm

I was out at my Stardust Observatory and even though it was a lovely clear sky all around me, when I went to take a photo of the setting Sun, there was this huge smoky band on the western horizon from a large bushfire. Within minutes the Sun was setting into the thick fiery atmosphere and being pulled into an egg shape!
 
I had to quickly take the solar filter off the lens to capture the Sun as it was disappearing into the thick smog; it went this amazing bright pink colour before it completely disappeared…it was very exciting. You can also just make out those two large sunspot groups AR2866 & AR2868 on the surface.

My images were taken on my last new moon weekend, with a Canon 70D camera & Canon 100-400mm lens with 2x teleconverter = 1280mm focal length with solar filter taken off the lens, the thick smoke acted as filter.
(This is the real hot pink colour of the Sun with no processing)

Wow…just like that, there’s a sprinkling of active sunspots on the Sun today!

The Sun looked very spotty with many active sunspots across its surface and some small prominences around the limb, The Active Regions are 2863, 2864, 2866 and 2868. The Sun is really starting to get quite active now with sunspots sprouting up nearly every day now.
 
The white light image was taken with a Canon 70D camera & Canon 100-400mm lens with 2x teleconverter = 1280mm focal length with solar filter attached…. The exposure was 1/500th second and ISO200, 20 images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PSCS4.
 
The H Alpha Image was taken with a Lunt 60mm H-alpha telescope and a Canon 700D camera with a 3x Barlow lens. Two sets of images were taken, one for the disc and another for the faint prominences and combined in PS.
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Sunspot Group AR2860
It’s lovely to see another large sunspot group on the Sun and its very active; there are a lot of little areas of sunspots that are spread out across the solar disc for quite some distance.
 
Because of the cloudy weather, I was only able to take some quick photos with my camera and lens on a tripod; I waited until there was a gap in the clouds then fired away as quick as I could to capture these images.
 
I’ve also included below a short movie of the clouds passing quickly across the face of the Sun, that looks quite awesome :-)
 
The images were taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Canon 100-400mm lens @400mm plus a 2x tele converter making a focal length of 1280mm.  A glass solar fitter was fitted to the lens.
 
Twenty images were captures with an exposure time of 1/500th second and ISO200, then stacked in RegiStak6, processed in PS CS4.
 
DANGER…PLEASE NOTE: Never look directly at the Sun without a proper solar filter attached to your camera lens or telescope. (See my attach image)

I was able to take some more images of this wonderful huge Sunspot late yesterday afternoon and this time I used my little planetary ZWO camera, which showed so much more detail around the active area than the DSLR images that I took on the 26th November 2020.
 
We are having a heat wave here at the moment so it’s very very hot outside taking pictures of the Sun…but it’s worth it :-)
 
Images were taken on the 28th November, with a 127mm refractor telescope fitted with a glass solar filter and using a ZWO 120 MC-S camera. The camera was at prime focus for the first image, and then I attached a 3x Barlow lens for the higher magnification images. AVI movie files were captured with 2500 frames and stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.