Solar Thursday 28th May

[marktownley]

Erratic weather here in the UK, one minute it is raining heavily, the next we have clear blue skies in between the rapidly scudding towering cumulus clouds. Only one thing for it, set the scopes up and have a big tarpaulin ready to cover everything up when the showers arrive, and then in the gaps, image...

I started the day around 6am before the instability had set in the atmosphere in my back yard, and used the 40mm scope to get some full disks before breakfast:

cak-full-disk-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

cak-full-disk-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

I took a slightly closer (not closeup!) view of our new active regions:

new-spot-cak-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

new-spot-cak-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

and a look down at the longer end of the spectrum...

ha-full-disk-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

ha-full-disk-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

new-active-regions-ha-overview-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

new-active-regions-ha-overview-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Not entirely happy with the Ha's, they're a bit primitive, and there is banding which, you will see from later shots is a interaction of Ha wavelengths and the chip, but, these can be flatted away so it's not really that much of a headache.

Next up it was time to switch over the quark. If you had seen my previous post would have known I was huffing about uneven illumination with the new camera. Well, switch over to the quark in its native form (ie I take some mods off) and it seems to be properly behaving itself. I think my favourite shot from the whole day is this one taken with the 100mm Tal:

ar12356-ha-closeup-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

ar12356-ha-closeup-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Given Michaels absence of large full disks at the moment as he is in Reykjavik, I decided to do a full disk with the Quark and the ED80. The banding I talked about earlier is there, but this does not worry me, it can be flatted out. These images are large though, and well worth a click and view full size...

quark-full-disk-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

quark-full-disk-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

quark-full-disk-invert-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

quark-full-disk-invert-colour- by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Tomorrow morning first thing is supposed to be good, so not going to drink too much tonight so can get up for 6am in the morning, hopefully the forecast will be right and can get a Saturday morning bonanza.

Enjoy your weekend!

Mark

[Derek Klepp]

Thanks Mark a grey Saturday morning here but like you I await the gaps.

[swisswalter]

Hi Mark

very fine results from that sesson, great details on the limb

[marktownley]

Thanks Derek, thanks Walter!

Here's a 3 pane mosaic I forgot of the eastern limb and AR12356 taken with the ED80 and quark at its native focal length (~2600mm fl)

full-scale-quark-mosaic by Mark Townley, on Flickr

I may catch you again in February also Walter, myself and Steve are planning a re-visit to CERN again if the bosses will let us go

[Derek Klepp]

Looks good Mark apparently Daystar are sending me a Quark to replace my Solaredi internals so I can use the scope at 80mm .I am currently waiting

[Richard]

Looking good, Hail and sun and wind and hail and rain and gap then hail......typical UK Summers day...

[oreoluna]

Great image Mark

[pedro]

Great images there Mark. The new camera is working well

[marktownley]

Thanks folks, got a good run in first thing this morning from 6am before the haze rolled in and we had to head off to Cardiff for a wedding. Just managed to get them all processed and uploaded, so if you fancy a sneak preview take a look on my flickr account. I'll try and get them uploaded later tonight / tomorrow morning on here...

[Montana]

A fantastic set Mark, glad you at least had some sunshine this week



nothing but cloud for me today and some rain! very disappointing.

Alexandra

[c8er]

Nice stuff thanks Mark. We all need some luck with the weather in dodgy/shifting conditions. When I did my timelapse of the big prom, over the two hours it mostly clouded over but somehow a clear hole remained in just the right place for me to image through and get every one of the 120 5 second avis.

Cheers,
Chris M

[marktownley]

Thanks Alexandra, thanks Chris

[yltansg]

Nice collection of images, Mark.

Alfred