Astounding solar prominence on trailing limb today
This has got to be the largest prominence complex I've ever seen. If you have the gear, be sure to take a look. It looks like a forest and is maybe 1/10 solar diameter at its highest section. It's spread out along maybe 15 to 20 degrees. The thing is just astoundingly huge. On the leading limb, there's some wispy prominences that reach as far away from the disc. Definitely worth a look if you have the Ha gear.
John, your post makes me want to get a scope that is capable of viewing prominences/flares, etc. Sounds like quite a show the sun is putting on right now! Mat -----Original Message----- From: Utah-Astronomy [mailto:utah-astronomy-bounces@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of John M. Craig Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2015 11:21 AM To: utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com Cc: utah-astronomy-request@mailman.xmission.com Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Astounding solar prominence on trailing limb today This has got to be the largest prominence complex I've ever seen. If you have the gear, be sure to take a look. It looks like a forest and is maybe 1/10 solar diameter at its highest section. It's spread out along maybe 15 to 20 degrees. The thing is just astoundingly huge. On the leading limb, there's some wispy prominences that reach as far away from the disc. Definitely worth a look if you have the Ha gear. _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Send messages to the list to Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com The Utah-Astronomy mailing list is not affiliated with any astronomy club. To unsubscribe go to: http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Then enter your email address in the space provided and click on "Unsubscribe or edit options". This message and any attachments are solely for the use of intended recipients. The information contained herein may include trade secrets, protected health or personal information, privileged or otherwise confidential information. Unauthorized review, forwarding, printing, copying, distributing, or using such information is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you are not an intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you received this email in error, and that any review, dissemination, distribution or copying of this email and any attachment is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please contact the sender and delete the message and any attachment from your system. Thank you for your cooperation
And it makes me want to get one of those elusive cloud filters! Thanks for the heads-up, John. My 60mm Lunt is waiting by the door. Linton -----Original Message----- From: Hutchings, Mat Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2015 12:56 PM To: Utah Astronomy Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Astounding solar prominence on trailing limb today John, your post makes me want to get a scope that is capable of viewing prominences/flares, etc. Sounds like quite a show the sun is putting on right now! Mat -----Original Message----- From: Utah-Astronomy [mailto:utah-astronomy-bounces@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of John M. Craig Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2015 11:21 AM To: utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com Cc: utah-astronomy-request@mailman.xmission.com Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Astounding solar prominence on trailing limb today This has got to be the largest prominence complex I've ever seen. If you have the gear, be sure to take a look. It looks like a forest and is maybe 1/10 solar diameter at its highest section. It's spread out along maybe 15 to 20 degrees. The thing is just astoundingly huge. On the leading limb, there's some wispy prominences that reach as far away from the disc. Definitely worth a look if you have the Ha gear. _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Send messages to the list to Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com The Utah-Astronomy mailing list is not affiliated with any astronomy club. To unsubscribe go to: http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Then enter your email address in the space provided and click on "Unsubscribe or edit options". This message and any attachments are solely for the use of intended recipients. The information contained herein may include trade secrets, protected health or personal information, privileged or otherwise confidential information. Unauthorized review, forwarding, printing, copying, distributing, or using such information is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you are not an intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you received this email in error, and that any review, dissemination, distribution or copying of this email and any attachment is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please contact the sender and delete the message and any attachment from your system. Thank you for your cooperation _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Send messages to the list to Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com The Utah-Astronomy mailing list is not affiliated with any astronomy club. To unsubscribe go to: http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Then enter your email address in the space provided and click on "Unsubscribe or edit options".
Hay, When I bought my first real telescope from Steve Fisher. He said it came with a cloud filter. I am still waiting for him to get the filter for me. STEVE where is my filter...............
On Apr 23, 2015, at 1:37 PM, Linton Rohr <lintonius@earthlink.net> wrote:
And it makes me want to get one of those elusive cloud filters!
For that matter where is Steve Fisher? Anyone seen him recently? Regarding the prominence, I've got my H-alpha scope set up on the back porch. Now I just need a hole to appear in the clouds. patrick On 23 Apr 2015, at 14:41, Mark Shelton via Utah-Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> wrote:
Hay, When I bought my first real telescope from Steve Fisher. He said it came with a cloud filter. I am still waiting for him to get the filter for me. STEVE where is my filter...............
On Apr 23, 2015, at 1:37 PM, Linton Rohr <lintonius@earthlink.net> wrote:
And it makes me want to get one of those elusive cloud filters!
Holy cow! That is phenomenally massive!!! Humongous!!! Plenty of nice surface detail, too. Truly amazing, John! Linton -----Original Message----- From: John M. Craig Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2015 11:21 AM To: utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com Cc: utah-astronomy-request@mailman.xmission.com Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Astounding solar prominence on trailing limb today This has got to be the largest prominence complex I've ever seen. If you have the gear, be sure to take a look. It looks like a forest and is maybe 1/10 solar diameter at its highest section. It's spread out along maybe 15 to 20 degrees. The thing is just astoundingly huge. On the leading limb, there's some wispy prominences that reach as far away from the disc. Definitely worth a look if you have the Ha gear. _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Send messages to the list to Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com The Utah-Astronomy mailing list is not affiliated with any astronomy club. To unsubscribe go to: http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Then enter your email address in the space provided and click on "Unsubscribe or edit options".
Yes! Very nice indeed. Since I have white light and Ha scopes mounted on the same mount I took a moment to compare the two views. White light is nice with lots of sunspots (though not nearly as nice as through the Bogdan using Chuck's donated full aperture filter - which now has me very spoiled.). But then to the eyepiece of the Ha and such a contrast. It's funny how much can be going on right under our noses (or eyeballs in this case) and we never know it. For those unable to view in Ha today find current Ha views of the Sun here: http://halpha.nso.edu patrick On 23 Apr 2015, at 11:21, John M. Craig <jmcraig@xmission.com> wrote:
This has got to be the largest prominence complex I've ever seen. If you have the gear, be sure to take a look. It looks like a forest and is maybe 1/10 solar diameter at its highest section. It's spread out along maybe 15 to 20 degrees. The thing is just astoundingly huge. On the leading limb, there's some wispy prominences that reach as far away from the disc.
Definitely worth a look if you have the Ha gear.
Siegfried had been monitoring list messages when John sent out his alert, and called me from Houston to let me know (Thanks Siegfried!). I rushed around to get the PST set up, ran outside- totally overcast, in just the few minutes it took me to get the scope ready. It took over an hour for the clouds to clear enough for a good view. It was worth the wait! Definitely one of the larger prominence complexes I've seen in a long time. Thanks for the alert, John! I snapped a few cell-phone pics and will post a link once I get them downloaded and processed, if they turn out worth a darn. Patrick, glad you and the club are enjoying the Baader filter on Andy. When the seeing is good, there is incredible detail to be seen on the sun even in white light. Eight inches of aperture will let you see quite a bit, so don't be afraid to bump up the power when the sky is steady and zoom right in on a sunspot group. This afternoon was good because the overcast prevented ground heating, so once the sky cleared, there wasn't any (or very little) warm air rising from the surface to ruin the seeing. I run the PST side-by-side on the same mount as an 80mm scope with a 2" Lunt wedge for white-light views. I agree that having both views side-by-side is the most interesting way to view the sun. On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 5:33 PM, Wiggins Patrick <paw@getbeehive.net> wrote:
Yes! Very nice indeed.
Since I have white light and Ha scopes mounted on the same mount I took a moment to compare the two views.
White light is nice with lots of sunspots (though not nearly as nice as through the Bogdan using Chuck's donated full aperture filter - which now has me very spoiled.).
But then to the eyepiece of the Ha and such a contrast. It's funny how much can be going on right under our noses (or eyeballs in this case) and we never know it.
For those unable to view in Ha today find current Ha views of the Sun here: http://halpha.nso.edu
patrick
On 23 Apr 2015, at 11:21, John M. Craig <jmcraig@xmission.com> wrote:
This has got to be the largest prominence complex I've ever seen. If you have the gear, be sure to take a look. It looks like a forest and is maybe 1/10 solar diameter at its highest section. It's spread out along maybe 15 to 20 degrees. The thing is just astoundingly huge. On the leading limb, there's some wispy prominences that reach as far away from the disc.
Definitely worth a look if you have the Ha gear.
Here's a hand-held cellphone shot. Not very good, but it gives you an idea of the size of the big prominence complex. http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii24/JethroTull1958/ATM/Astro/April%2023%...
Nice work Chuck. So when are you going to invent Halpha binoculars? patrick Sent from my iPad
On Apr 23, 2015, at 19:06, Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> wrote:
Here's a hand-held cellphone shot. Not very good, but it gives you an idea of the size of the big prominence complex.
http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii24/JethroTull1958/ATM/Astro/April%2023%... _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy
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Very impressive, Chuck. Sent from my iPhone
On Apr 23, 2015, at 9:32 PM, Wiggins Patrick <paw@getbeehive.net> wrote:
Nice work Chuck.
So when are you going to invent Halpha binoculars?
patrick
Sent from my iPad
On Apr 23, 2015, at 19:06, Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> wrote:
Here's a hand-held cellphone shot. Not very good, but it gives you an idea of the size of the big prominence complex.
http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii24/JethroTull1958/ATM/Astro/April%2023%... _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy
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_______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy
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Been done. He's too late. On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 9:32 PM, Wiggins Patrick <paw@getbeehive.net> wrote:
Nice work Chuck.
So when are you going to invent Halpha binoculars?
patrick
Sent from my iPad
On Apr 23, 2015, at 19:06, Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> wrote:
Here's a hand-held cellphone shot. Not very good, but it gives you an idea of the size of the big prominence complex.
http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii24/JethroTull1958/ATM/Astro/April%2023%...
_______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy
Send messages to the list to Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com
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-- Siegfried
Just thought I'd pass this along in case anyone was interested or didn't know about it. -Barrett Dear Einstein@Home volunteers, February 19th was the tenth anniversary of the Einstein@Home launch. A lot has happened in the past decade, and thanks to your support, the project has become one of the largest distributed volunteer projects on the planet. Thank you for helping Einstein@Home to do great science! We would like to begin Einstein@Home's anniversary year by launching the Einstein@Home newsletter. Four times a year, project scientists and developers will tell you about our exciting science. In each newsletter, a handful of Einstein@Home team members will report on what they have been up to, and what their plans for the future are. Our first newsletter features updates from Bernd Machenschalk on how the project operates, and from M. Alessandra Papa on Einstein@Home's latest and most sensitive gravitational-wave hunt. Benjamin Knispel brings you up to speed with the search for binary radio pulsars and Holger Pletsch has news on the Fermi gamma-ray pulsar analysis. Enjoy! Bruce Allen, Director, Einstein@Home News on the gravitational-wave search (M. Alessandra Papa) ---------------------------------------------------------- The Einstein@Home all-sky search for continuous gravitational-wave signals in LIGO data, in the frequency range of 50 to 450 Hz, has given us over 16 million candidates to follow-up in LIGO S6 data. A first stage follow-up is currently running on Einstein@Home and should end soon. We have already lined up the next step: a second-stage follow-up of the most promising (some millions) of these candidates. This second stage inspects the candidates much more closely, and reduces the uncertainty in the signal parameters by about 90%. This second follow-up digs deeper into the detector noise, and will significantly increase the sensitivity of our search. This is very exciting because it is the first large scale deep follow-up we have ever performed! In addition to these all-sky searches, Einstein@Home is also searching for continuous gravitational waves from specific targets in the sky. For the next stage of this, studies are ongoing to determine the optimal search set-up, the most promising target astrophysical objects, and the appropriate frequency and frequency-derivative search ranges. The next Einstein@Home targeted-search runs will be based on the results on these studies. News on the binary radio pulsar search (Benjamin Knispel) --------------------------------------------------------- Einstein@Home is currently analyzing data from two different radio telescopes. The BRP4 run is searching data taken very recently with the Arecibo radio telescope as part of the PALFA survey. This is an ongoing survey: once we catch up with the backlog of observational data, the search is paused, and resumes when new data arrives. The BRP5 run that was analyzing data from the Parkes radio telescope, taken in the so-called "Perseus Arm surveyâ€, has recently finished. So far, we have identified several weak candidates, but sadly, attempts to re-observe them with the Parkes radio telescope revealed that they were all false alarms. The latest binary radio pulsar search, called BRP6, is a further analysis of archival observations from the Parkes Telescope, from the very successful Parkes Multi-beam Pulsar Survey (PMPS). Previous Einstein@Home analysis of this data searched for pulsar spinning up to 130 rotations per second, and led to the discovery of 24 new pulsars (http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.0467). This new analysis, based on improvements in the Einstein@Home GPU apps, will go up to 300 Hz. This is interesting territory: fast-spinning pulsars in short-orbital-period binaries are extremely exciting astronomical objects, which enable precise tests of general relativity with them and studies of stellar evolution and the pulsar population in our Galaxy. We feel sure that more treasures remain to be uncovered! News on the gamma-ray pulsar search (Holger Pletsch) ---------------------------------------------------- Recently, we developed advanced methods (http://arxiv.org/abs/1408.6962) to improve the sensitivity of blind searches for unknown gamma-ray pulsars in data from the Large Area Telescope on board NASA's Fermi Satellite, which was launched in 2008. These techniques boost the sensitivity significantly: we can now detect gamma-ray pulsars that are 50% fainter than before, without increasing the computational cost! Our latest Einstein@Home run, FGRP4, makes use of these improvements to conduct a new blind survey of unidentified, pulsar-like Fermi sources. The combination of improved methods, with the extra sensitivity of the latest Fermi data, makes us optimistic that we will make new discoveries. In fact we have already identified a large number of highly significant pulsar candidates and are currently carefully studying them. News from the project administration (Bernd Machenschalk) --------------------------------------------------------- We had a busy time around the end of last year! The locality scheduling for the new gravitational-wave analysis turned out to require much more attention than expected. We were very busy moving data around and improving the locality scheduler - and still are. Before the holidays we tried to get the entire project in a shape where it could survive without us -- we wanted to be with our families and friends and not busy keeping the project running. But it turned out that we had underestimated the progress that Einstein@Home would make: we got an unexpected boost of computing power over the holidays, and ran out of "work"! Fortunately this was easily fixed. More importantly, there was to a bug in our server monitoring, which resulted in one of the Einstein@Home servers filling up without any warning. The affected server holds the uploaded result files from all Einstein@Home clients. Its file system was filled to the brim, which had severe consequences for the project. It took about a week to get the project running again smoothly. This was the first unplanned long downtime of Einstein@Home for quite a number of years. We did use the downtime for some improvements, which mean that the server is now working better than ever before! Finally, some security issues turned up (the widely discussed gethostbyname() or "GHOST" problem) that needed urgent attention, and required updating and rebooting about 20 project servers. ----------------------------- If you would like to discuss this newsletter with other Einstein@Home volunteers, and the project developers and scientists, please visit this thread in the discussions forum: http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/forum_thread.php?id=11211 Thank you for your continued support, Bruce Allen, Benjamin Knispel, Bernd Machenschalk, M. Alessandra Papa, and Holger Pletsch for the Einstein@Home team ----------------------------- To opt out of future emails from Einstein@Home, visit: http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/opt_out.php?code=239aeccd0df133b8396e37ca8d6846...
I was thinking of buying that Howie Glatter platform that joins two PSTs to form a true binocular. Might still do it one of these days. The only problem with solar binos is that they are best suited to alt-az mounts, too avoid having to tip one's head over sideways as you would if they were mounted to an EQ mount that tracks the sun. A workaround would be a GoTo alt-az mount, which a lot of people use anyway, or tube rotation rings such as some old Newtonians use. I used to use my solar scopes on a TeleTrack GoTo alt-az mount, but got weary of the setup procedure. I now use a regular old-school GEM with electric RA drive. I can get it polar aligned by dead-reckoning in daylight close enough that the sun stays in the FOV for over an hour. On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 9:34 PM, Siegfried Jachmann <siegfried@jachmann.org> wrote:
Been done. He's too late.
On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 9:32 PM, Wiggins Patrick <paw@getbeehive.net> wrote:
Nice work Chuck.
So when are you going to invent Halpha binoculars?
patrick
participants (9)
-
BWFlowers -
Chuck Hards -
Hutchings, Mat -
Joe Bauman -
John M. Craig -
Linton Rohr -
Mark Shelton -
Siegfried Jachmann -
Wiggins Patrick