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[Paulie pchris00]

So far this summer the weather hasn't cooperated much for observing, night or day. Recently, though, I acquired a Coronado personal solar telescope from Bill. I've only been able to use it a few times so far, but the detail visible in the hydrogen alpha wavelength has made solar observing exciting again. An H Alpha solar scope had been next on my astronomical wish list for awhile, so I'm very pleased that this opportunity came up. I've had access to the C.A.S. Coronado telescope at Conway Observatory for years, but now it's no longer necessary to drive all the way to the observatory for highly detailed solar observing.

I haven't figured out an easy (and more importantly, inexpensive) way to get good images through the Coronado, but I'm sure I'll figure out something soon. I still plan to observe the Sun in white light, most likely through my funnel projection screen on my 60mm refractor, and I'm already thinking of ways I could mount the two telescopes together. I'm currently mounting the Coronado on a lightweight camera tripod. It works fine for now, but I think I'll need something more sturdy for long term use.

I'm looking forward to seeing our star much more regularly soon.

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[Paulie pchris00]

My best image so far, a pair of promenences on the solar limb last Friday evening.

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[Paulie pchris00]

I still haven't figured out how to photograph detail on the solar disk with just my cell phone, but with a little luck, I can manage to get prominences off the limb. There were quite a few Monday morning.

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[Paulie pchris00]

Not getting any easier. Here are a couple shots of Tuesday's solar limb, with prominences showing.

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[Paulie pchris00]

Last Friday morning's solar observation, and also incorporated my Sun funnel for white light sunspot observations.

[Paulie pchris00]

Probably my best solar prominence picture yet, not that that's saying much, except that I got lucky. Solar disk was pretty awesome, too, but will need something other than a cell phone to photograph it. This was taken today at 10:10:24 AM CDST.

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[Paulie pchris00]

For the last few days, we've had active region 12396 in great view for observation. It's the biggest sunspot group I've seen since last October. I had a chance to see it with the Coronado Friday evening, and tried photographing it Saturday afternoon using my funnel screen on a 60mm refractor. I was able to capture some nice prominence activity, but photographing sunspot group 2396 didn't turn out as well. Here are the prominences from Friday evening.

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[Paulie pchris00]

Got a better image of sunspot 2396 this morning on the funnel screen, but now it is starting to rotate out of view, and becoming foreshortened.

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[Paulie pchris00]

And this morning's prominences.

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[Paulie pchris00]

Heliophiles! (Is that even a word)? It's been awhile since I've updated this thread.

No spectacular prominences yesterday morning, but some smaller ones which I captured by accident. The real action seems to be right near the center of the solar disk. A line of sunspots dotted the face of the Sun in white light, but when I checked the Coronado, two dark sunspots stood out, but there was bright emission near the region. It was really difficult to capture via cellphone, but I managed to get a few decent ones out of dozens of attempts. It seriously might be one of the coolest things I've observed on our star.

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[Paulie pchris00]

For comparison, here are NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory images from about the same time.

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