May 15 2021 Observations. Visual and Imaging.

[DeepSolar64]

Session time is 9:48am until 12:33pm EDT local time ( US ). The temperature is 58 degrees F at the beginning and 66F at session's end. The seeing is fair at first degrading rapidly as the day heats up. The skies are clear at session beginning and partly cloudy at sessions end. Today is both a visual session and an imaging one. I imaged in both WL and Ha.


Coronado SolarMax II 90 DS. 32x, 41.5x and 64x ( Ha )
I can see three active areas on the solar disc. AR12822 in the NW and AR12823 in the SW. I can see a couple of filaments associated with AR12822. The third one is a disturbance in the SW quadrant. I can see a couple of small filaments in it's vicinity also.

I see no large filaments on the disc. Only a small number of insignificant ones. Outside of AR related ones I see a couple of faint ones not far from AR12822 and another one in the SW quadrant.

Prominences are nice today! I see and image a nice one in the NW that resembles an animal with a large heavy tail and a long trunk or proboscis. It's feeding on solar plasma! I guess it is what it eats, Huh!? In the SE I see a couple of nice bright ones that also image well. There is a couple of smaller proms to their north.

The mottles are easy today and the spicule layer is visible as well.


Celestron NexStar 102GT w/Altair wedge and 540nm filter. 55x ( WL )
AR12822 is definitely weakening, It's major sunspot has shrunk a bit and the umbra is now light bridged into two pieces. It does still maintain a penumbra though. I can see a new but tiny sunspot in another area to it's west in a faint facula. I can also see another patch of faculae to that one's west near the limb. I also notice faculae in the SE and SW. The SE faculae corresponds to a disturbance seen there in Ha. Wait! I spy a tiny new sunspot in the SW quadrant. Now where did that come from?

The solar granulation is visible but not very well.


I also used the Orion70 to do full disc WL imaging near the end of the session but the seeing had worsened so much the image came up a bit blurry.


Today's session music is...

Sarah Brightman: Symphony.
Vivaldi: The Four Seasons, played by Anne Akiko Meyers.
Carly Simon: Moonlight Serenade. My favorite album by her and that says a lot!


Carpe Noctem!

James

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[dhkaiser]

Good job on the reporting and imaging.

[solarchat]

Thanks!

[ffellah]

Excellent images, James !

Franco

[DeepSolar64]

Thank you Dan, Stephen and Franco. It was a nice day and I enjoyed it. Tomorrows weather looks mostly cloudy.

[marktownley]

Nice report and images James. Plagued by cloud here; got up at 5,30am, not a cloud in the sky. Scope out and setup at 6am, managed a quick look visually with the Lunt50 single stack, in the time it took to go inside get the quark and put it in the back of the scope for DS view the sky had completely clouded and has remained that way since. A slack area of low pressure is sat over us today so i'm not expecting much in the way of improvement either, oh well!

[JochenM]

Thanks for the report, James. Your images look great as well.

[MAURITS]

Excellent images James and a beautiful setup.

[EGRAY_OBSERVATORY]

Sarah Brightman: Symphony, Vivaldi: The Four Seasons and Carly Simon: are three of my favs James.

I'm putting-up with various classics via "Classic-FM" radio in the observatory, but also playing along with two so far on my Harmonica. (Luckily the observatory is sound-proof, so the neighbours, can't "ear-wig"...!!

You have done well with those captures today, as are just excellent too, plus the set-up pics.

Thanks for sharing
Terry

[eroel]

James:
Very good imaging, report and setup.
Got some on the 15th too.
Regards,
Eric.

[DeepSolar64]

Thanks everyone for your input and compliments!

Mark, I battled clouds today too but did pull a brief visual session off with the SMII60 and Orion70. Better luck I wish you...

Terry,
This album ( Moonlight Serenade ) by Carly Simon is different than her old stuff. It's a light romantic jazz album. Her contralto voice lends itself excellently to this type of music. She even approaches Diana Krall!

James

[MapleRidge]

Excellent images James

The big prom is very nice to see!!!

Brian

[DeepSolar64]

Thanks Brian. I was rather satisfied with the mono image. It shows a fair amount of detail.

[Astrophil]

Those are good solar images, James. For some reason I thought you were a visual only guy, boy was I wrong. Looking forward to more great images.

Phil

[DeepSolar64]

Phil,
I am visual-dominant but got into imaging earlier this year. I have a lot to learn but I am slowly getting there. Thanks!

I loved the big hose-nosed looking prom. The " Hosemonster " it was!

James

[DeepSolar64]

Thanks everyone for your comments and thanks!