There's been some fantastic solar activity the past few days including tall, spire-like prominences and a long quiescent prominence. Observations were made using a Coronado PST H-alpha telescope and a 8-24mm Vixen zoom eyepiece.

Dave Mitsky

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Hi David,

I have never looked through a Hydrogen-alpha filter at the Sun before, may I ask you what it looks like using the image here please. Do you see the top view or bottom view?

Many thank's

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Richard Pearson
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Although I'm not familiar with the terminology used, the upper half of the image is far more likely than the bottom to represent H-alpha activity as seen through amateur instruments. The dark snaking lines are filaments.

Paul Hyndman has been doing some terrific H-alpha imaging of late. Some of his early work can be seen at http://www.astro-nut.com/sun.html

A film photograph that I took through a superb H-alpha rig is posted at http://dvaa.org/php/mpix.php?p=Dave_Mitsky...sLongerExposure. It was a longer exposure to capture the prominence activity and does not begin to do justice to what was visbible in the chromosphere. Digital cameras are far better at capturing such detail.

Dave Mitsky

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Chance favors the prepared mind.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Hi David,

I followed your link to Paul Hydman’s site and the images there really are excellent, all these images look very similar to those appearing on the Space Weather web site. I wanted to let other Forum users see these images on the Universe Today site, so I made contact with Paul and he was kind enough to give me copyright permission. He also provided another really good suggestion for a web site link to visit, which appears below.

1. [Oct 14 2003] 2. [Dec 27 2003] 3. [Apr 06 2003]


1. 2. 3.

"In the unlikely event you're not already familiar with the superb solar work, and other imaging endeavours of UK backyard astronomer extraordinaire Adrian Catterall, you may want to check out his stuff at (tell him I said hi),” Paul

Visit Adrian Catterall

Now that the price of H-alpha filters have come down in price it opens the way for amateur astronomers to get involved in observing the Sun and to see the finer detail of prominences and filaments. Perhaps you could post a resent up to date solar image taken by yourself David, which would be good.

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There are some excellent black & white H-alpha images at http://perso.club-internet.fr/legault/solar.html

Greg Piepol makes the rounds at the Northeast Astronomy Forum and star parties such as the Laurel Highlands Star Cruise and the Black Forest Star Party. His 0.2 Angstrom Solar Spectrum filter and 155mm f/9 Astro-Physics Starfire EDT equipped with a Denkmeier binoviewer yields stunning H-alpha views. Some of his images are posted at http://www.sungazer.net/photo1.html and at http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?...&id=99&aid=2426

The world-famous astrophotographer Jack Newton's work is well represented on the Coronado web site gallery at http://www.coronadofilters.com/cgi/display...?gallery=newton

Dave Mitsky

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Chance favors the prepared mind.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Richard,

I've been putting off the purchase of a digital SLR until the prices drop, which hasn't happened yet. I'm hoping to do some PST web cam imaging with a fellow ASH member sometime in the not-too-distant future.

Here's a shot of the Venus transit that Jim Sweeney, a fellow DVAA member and the owner of the 180mm A-P Starfire that I used to take the photo that I mentioned in my last post, took - http://dvaa.org/php/mpix.php?p=Jim_Sweeney&i=VenusSol

Dave Mitsky

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Chance favors the prepared mind.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Yes it’s a fine image David. While the event was in progress I reported that this was a historic occasion. Not only was this the first time that amateur astronomers had the chance to view the event for the first time worldwide. The images being taken were very sharp and clear, so much so that while crossing the Sun’s meridian, the Venusian atmosphere was visible as a rippled ring around the planet’s black disk. Close up, this Venus atmospheric region showed signs of stratification due to dense cloud layers. I therefore speculated that this might lead to new planetary studies into the way the Venus atmosphere was made up with cloud layers.

After the transit event I thought that this may be a valuable exercise to carryout by a keen astronomer after gathering and studying Venus disk transit images.

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Richard Pearson
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