Solar Observing – International Solar SUNday

Is there time to build a replica Stonehenge on Blackheath?

... you bring the stones!

My apologies I am not able to attend will be in Bristol attending a wedding, yawn!!!!!!!!!

No problem, Brian, thanks for letting me know. Enjoy the wedding 😉

Please note that this event has been moved to SATURDAY between 1pm and 5pm, as the weather conditions are more favourable on Saturday.

Have to say I thoroughly enjoyed our solar viewing session on Blackheath today. An excellent volunteer turnout, and great to see so many of the forum regulars turning up! Thanks to Andy, Clive, Rupert and Tej, amongst others.

Particularly enjoyed using the new Daystar Quark on my scope... after finally getting it to focus (my fault entirely!). The view of the many prominences was superb... I really liked the view of the detached prominence on the western limb, as well as the massive looped prominence to the east.

Anyway, a great day out, and some lovely reactions from attendees. It's always great to catch hold of passers by, who have probably never looked through a scope before, let alone at the Sun. Somewhat frustrating with the intermittent cloud, but we got to see lots regardless.

Thanks again to everyone who helped make the day such a success.

I too thoroughly enjoyed the day. Looking through the Daystar Quark on Mike's frac was spectacular and I am relieved to hear I am not the cause of Mike's initial woes on his system, of which he accused me of jinxing it because I had purchased new equipment recently....what an absurd superstition! 🙂

It was great to meet you all again and Andy for the first time, whose wry jokes are just as funny in person as on the forum.

But the real star of the show was..well, our star! The one that we all came to see and boy did it give us a hell of a show. I have never seen a detaching prominence before, a first for me. And then the two huge prominences that were like newly weds joining together in matrimony and perhaps soon about to divorce in an explosive solar flare which none of us saw, I just like to imagine that could have happened after Mike had explained the possibility to me!

It was also a pleasure to entertain passerbys/visitors with views of the sun through my scope and educate them with whatever knowledge I had of our nearest star and my equipment. In turn, once again, I had gained further knowledge on imaging and general knowledge from Rupert and Mike, thanks guys.

I ended up leaving about 6:30 ish because every time i started to pack away from 5pm, a passerby would come with friendly curiosity and I just couldnt help putting back the eyepiece to show them the views of the sun and got into lengthy conversations, with them answering their questions as best I could with the main authoritative organisers/members now gone. A family chilled out on the grass with me, patiently waiting for the sun to emerge again from the clouds to see through my scope and they seemed genuinely satisfied that it was worth the wait which is nice because not everyone quite appreciates the significance of what they are looking at. They said they were friends of a certain "Dr Ed" who presents many of the Planetarium shows in the Royal Observatory.

I took an opportunity during a quiet period to capture an image of the detaching prominence...didnt get time to do the other interesting prominences though. Its just a quick rough processing to show a little of what we saw today:

Oh this was taken with my dslr...I still have dirt on my new astro camera (the one that has jinxed Mike's Solar Daystar!) but Rupert suggested that it looked to be on the covering lens rather than the sensor...So will do another aircan duster on it...failing that, then will use the microfibre lens cloth with the alcohol cleaning solution.

A little less dramatic than Tej's photo but at least this proves we were all there! Note the presence of the "Simpsons" sky, the threat of a total solar eclipse by a large kite and Canis Minor to the left of Mike's tripod.

I am sorry I missed it. Tej your shot of sun really good.

Hi Guys,

I would just like to say thank you for turning up on the Saturday. The weather, while not as perfect as expected was certainly better than today's.

I'm happy everyone enjoyed themselves and look forward to the next time. It won't be too long until we can start some evening sessions again but hopefully before that happens we can also have another solar event outside the ROG.

Thanks again

Rupert

Love the photos Tej and Andy.

Tej, you really caught that detached prominence well. It was a stunning feature to look at... I could actually see it gradually move away from the Sun as I was viewing it. Quite amazing.

Andy, love the Canis Minor reference. I'll have to tell Nick that one (it's his dog). As a complete aside, did you know that Alpha Canis Minoris (or Procyon) is on the flag of Brazil? In hindsight, I'm surprised that Brian didn't mention that in his talk about Brazilian Astronomy earlier this month 🙂

Mike
Yes was my mistake. The stars on the Brazilian flag represent the sky over Rio on the Day in 1889 that Brazil became a republic. The first flag was a version of the stars and stripes based on the USA this only lasted 5 days as the then president did not like it so they went to a design that was created during the reign of Don Pedro ii.

Thanks Brian, that's very interesting... I didn't know that (and I'm only winding you up about not including this in your talk... your talk was fascinating as it was).

With regard to the dog, and with a tip of the hat to the imminent start of John McEnroe's commentary on Wimbledon, perhaps I should have put, "You cannot be Sirius!"