~ ‘Starry Starry Night’ How to learn the night sky ~
18th August 2022 at 1pm
 
This is the first adult presentation that I’ve been able to do since Covid-19 restrictions have been lifted and it was for Science Week 2022.
 
It was so lovely to spend time again with many very interested members of the public to show them how to learn the night sky from there own back garden.
 
I also touched on how they could also begin to take some photographs of the night sky and other helpful information to start their journey of discovery into our starry starry night J
 
Another resource is the Astrolink page on my website will help greatly in finding Star Charts at: http://www.mystardustobservatory.com/astro-links.html
 
*** Happy Stargazing *** Noeleen :-D

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.

What a surprise I got when I looked at the Sun late this afternoon and saw this huge prominence putting on an incredible show on the south-western limb of the Sun…what an enormous prominence it was with so much power…. Our star is truly awesome!
 
It’s been reported on Spaceweather.com that it’s a giant wall of scorching hot plasma that’s more than five times taller than our entire planet Earth!
 
Images were taken with a Lunt solar telescope and a Canon 700D camera with a 2x Barlow lens attached. To sets of images were captured one for the disc and one set for the prominences, stacked in RegiStax6 and combined in PS.
 
Second image is a close up view that’s an overexposed image to capture the gaseous prominence. Image taken with Lunt 60mm solar telescope and Canon 700D camera, with 5x Powermate lens attached.

Wow! Huge Prominence
 
A live movie of this beautiful prominence on the western limb of the Sun, taken with the Canon 700D in Movie mode for 1 minute and forty seconds using a Lunt 60mm solar telescope and 5x Powermate lens attached to the camera.

~ Our Sun Today on the 13th July 2022 ~
 
The Sun was very active late this afternoon, especially around those two large sunspot groups AR 3053 & AR 3055. There are also some very interesting looking filaments on the solar surface with that huge filament nearing the solar limb that may produce some stunning prominences in the coming days!
 
Images taken with a Lunt 60mm solar telescope and a Canon 700D camera, two sets of images were captures one for the disc and one for the faint prominences and combined in PS.

Today you can see a very large delicate prominence on the western limb of the Sun; it’s from a huge filament that’s been on the solar surface for the last couple of day and its now reached the edge of the limb.
 
It’s interesting to see these solar events as it shows what’s really happening when those dark filaments rotate to the edge the sun, plasma is continually being ejected from our Star, either passively or explosively as shown here!
 
When I take solar images with the Canon DSLR camera on the Monochrome setting, I’m able to capture much more delicate detail in the prominences, another thing with this setting I only have to take one image to show both the disc and prominences. Usual I have to do two sets of images at different exposures and then combined them, with this method I can get more detail on the solar surface but lose detail on the prominences. (So I’m doing it both ways now)

​I’ve also coloured the monochrome image (below) using the colourize feature in the Hue/Saturation menu in Photoshop and I think it come out quite lovely :-)

Images were taken with a Lunt solar telescope and a Canon 700D camera with a 2x Barlow lens attached. To sets of images were captured one for the disc and one set for the prominences, stacked in RegiStax6 and combined in PS.

​The monochrome image is one set of 20 images stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS, exposure time was 1/40th second and ISO800.

The huge solar filament that I’ve been observing for the past week has now reached the north western limb of the Sun and will probably display some very active prominences over the next few days.
 
There is a very large active Sunspot group called AR 3038 that has doubled in size over the last 24 hours which is very unstable with a ‘beta-gamma’ magnetic field.
 
Some solar photographers that submit to Spaceweather.com have even been able to capture those elusive Ellerman bombs interactions inside this sunspot area, please see an excellent image taken by Richard N Schrantz from Nicholasvilla in the USA.
https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=185864
 
I’ve also captured some of that activity but am limited by the small 60mm aperture of my solar telescope to see the delicate detail.
 
To read more about Ellerman bombs, please go to an article called:
Multiwavelength spectropolarimetric observations of an Ellerman bomb By: R Rezaei and C Beck at: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015A%26A...582A.104R/abstract
 
I also picked up a small solar flare from new sunspot AR 3040 on the eastern side of the Sun along with some active prominences firing away.
 
My images were captured on the 22nd June and is a composite photo of two sets of images taken with a Lunt 60mm solar telescope with a Canon 700D camera attached tracked on a HEQ Pro mount.
 
One set of 20 images was taken of the disc with an exposure of 1/320th second and ISO200, and one set of 20 images taken for the faint prominences with and exposure of 1/15th second and ISO200. The images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed and combined in PS CS4.

It was a bit of a challenge getting photos of the Sun today as there was a lot of cloud in the sky, but I did it…that long Filament was just huge and those prominences on the limb looked spectacular.
 
Information on Spaceweather.com states its over 370,000 km long…Wow! The monochrome image is just 20 single images stacked in RegiStax6; it shows the delicate prominences in much more detail than the colour images…
 
My photos were taken with a Lunt 60mm solar telescope and a Canon 700D with a 2x Barlow lens attached. Two sets of images were captured at different exposures and stacked in RegiStax6 and combined in PS. I used the monochrome setting in the camera for the black and white image.

What a difference to see the Sun in a different wavelength of light. I know a lot of people cannot afford a dedicated (Ha) solar telescope but it’s just mind-blowing how much more activity and surface detail you can see with one of these specialised telescope.  I could not afford a new one, so I took the risk and brought a second hand one and I’ve not been happier :-D
 
Yesterday I posted a white light image and all you can see are just the Sunspots on the surface of the Sun with no activity.
 
My Lunt solar telescope is only 60mm in aperture, but the solar view is truly awesome...the Sun is one of those astronomical objects that can change in real time while your observing it, and that’s extremely exciting to see.
 
The (Ha) images were two sets of 20 images each, one set for the solar disc at 1/320th second exposures and ISO200 & the other set for the faint prominences at 1/15th second and ISO200.
 
All the images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed and combined in PS. The monochrome image is not combined just 25 images stacked with exposure of 1/30th second and ISO800, you can see a lot more detail in the prominences with this image as it’s not a composite photo.

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.

Dawn Planets…Wow!
 
Oh Wow...what a magnificent sight it was before dawn this morning, with all the planets lined up on the ecliptic. You can clearly see little Mercury low on the horizon; I had to twist the camera and myself around to go high up the sky at the zenith near the palm trees to capture Saturn but Yay! I got it :-D
 
Those stunning colours are from the fine volcanic aerosols high up in our atmosphere from the Hunga-Tonga eruption that happened last January…. the first image was taken an hour before sunrise at 5.35am and the second image at 5.50am, 45 minutes before sunrise, this is when the colours are at there most vibrant.
 
My first image was taken with a Canon 70D camera and a Tokina 11-16mm lens @15mm; the exposure was 10 seconds and ISO400. The second image was taken with a Tokina 10-17mm fisheye lens @10mm with an exposure of 8 seconds and ISO200.

~ I used a fisheye lens so I could capture all the planets right up to the zenith on the ecliptic  ~