… in my world, there is Photography, Astronomy, Electronics, Software Engineering, 3d printing and much more
On August 12 I will be in central Spain to observe the solar eclipse. Apart from the regular camera setup, this time I will have a dedicated camera running, to show the sun being completely shadowed by the moon.
Follow the link for the live feed: https://live.picsngeek.at/
With the sun in solar maximum 2024 had several fascinating aurora events even far from the aurora oval at around 66 degrees latitude. Therefore I planned for a trip to Iceland, to see aurora in its best. Who could expect the sun to take a pause, so no significant eruption takes place from the first days of 2025 on? Reencouraged with a note from space weather officials, that the setting of interplanetary magnetic field, earths magnetic field and the ring current was favorable to produce aurora at least close to the aurora oval, I travelled to Iceland. Arriving there in anticipation for a pristine northern winter experience had another surprise at hand: a large low pressure zone lured south of Iceland. This low pressure zone caused strong winds (reaching almost 30m/s), lots of rain and unusually high temperatures (up to 9°C) for February.
After four days of grey skies and rain, weather was improving a bit. Even a 3-4 hour window of cloudless skies was predicted for the late evening. As if planned, when the clouds subseeded, the aurora began its show. Most of the time, Aurora was like eery greyish cloud bands to the naked eye. But during phases of increased intensity, green and red tones were also clearly visible. On camera, especially the green aurora looks spectacular!
The following day was again quite wet. But at night, once again a few hours with little cloud cover provided another aurora show to be witnessed. To top off the Iceland experience, on the last day a few moments of sunlight during sunset let me part in joy to have seen aurora and the beauty of this island
Recently I visited Helsinki (Finland). Temperatures dropped down to -15°C, causing even the waters in Kruununvuorenselkä to freeze over. Further out, patches of ice foes were drifting. Along with a fresh blanket of snow, everything just looked amazing. Especially Nuuksio national park close to Helsinki provided a marvellous setting for a great time
Finally, the long awaited comet C2023/A3 Tsuchinschan-ATLAS reappeared after its passage close to the sun. With a well timed window between clouds, I could observe and image the comet. From all the announcements, I expected the comet to be brighter. But still, it is a naked eye comet to enjoy with a pretty long tail.
So i started a new imaging run with higher magnification (1320mm instead of 564mm) and more sensitive camera. The resulting image of almost 13 hours data shows a lot more of the surrounding and weak features, even though, the same imaging location was used. The same Bortle 6-7 location was used, observing low above the light cone of the city.
Image data:
Date: 2024-01-10 – 2024-01-27
Location: Graz, Austria
Telescope: TS 256mm f/5 Newtonian with 1.06x ES HR coma corrector (equals to 1320mm focal length)
Camera: QHY268M @ -10C
Filters: Optolong LRGB, Baader H-alpha, O-iii
Guiding: PHD2 off-axis guider (ASI485)
Exposures:
H-alpha: 30x600s
O-iii: 24x600s
L: 116x60s
R: 24x120s
G: 18x120s
B: 18x120s
During the last weeks I imaged IC1613, a dwarf galaxy of the local group in constellation Cetus. After stacking the images, I detected an object, which obviousely moved 28 arcsec during the 129 minutes I captured images on November 15th. It seems to be Asteroid (140) Siwa.
On November 04 and 05 a few Coronal Mass Ejections were released from the sun (a coronal hole is facing our direction). Yesterday evening at 17:06 CET the solar storm arrived and created an impressive aurora display. The most fascinating fact is, that conditions were so intense, that even in southern Austria (below 47 degrees North) the sky in northern directions was colored red! It was an amazing visual experience!
The pictures below were captured with my mobile phone. The aurora was so bright, that even handheld images were possible!
On August 12, two successive solar flares erupted from active region AR13395 within 92 minutes. The video begins at the end of the C8.8 eruption, which started at 09:04 UTC. At 2/3rds in the video, the second eruption occurs, which startet at 10:36 and lasted till 10:54.
Last night our astronomy club (www.stav.at) organized a curbside astronomy afternoon and night in Frauental. We had perfect weather conditions to present several celetial wonders to the public. In the afternoon, the sun could be observed in white light and through hydrogen alpha filter. Meanwhile kids could enjoy different activities. When darkness fell, Saturn was obviousely the great “star” to get a lot of a’s and o’s. Several visitors were in disbelief, that a mobile phone would be able to capture a prominence or Saturn / Jupiter. So I shot the 2 images below keeping the visitors baffled. A few tried their own luck by holding their smartphone to the telescope eyepiece. Most of them couldn’t believe, that their *own* phone could do that 🙂
The evening passed by so quickly, but it was a lot of fun and inspiring to talk to all the folks stopping by 🙂
Last week I could participate in a telescope meeting in hungary. Although it was hot and humid, the air was quite stable during the day. So I could capture a timelapse of the beautiful sunspot region 13403 with impressive resolution of 0.158 arcseconds per pixel through my 10″ Newtonian telescope. The high magnification paid off, as I could for the first time capture the fascitating motion of the granulation.
Technical details:
Telescope: 10″ f/5 Newton + 2.5x Barlow lens = 3125mm effective focal length
Camera: QHY183M (2.4µm pixels)
Filters: Baader solar film + Baader solar continuum
Sequence: 149x 1000 frames, 30s interval
Recording time: 10:26-11:42 UTC
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