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Transparent to Neutrinos: Summer Sun

http://roundgowheels.blogspot.com/2015/08/summer-sun.html

Posts From a Retired Professor. Thursday, August 6, 2015. July was not a good month for solar observing. Almost every day was cloudy, and for weeks hardly any dramatic activity appeared on the Sun. Clouds finally disappeared on the morning of July 31st. Although the Sun had few features, I set up my equipment in the heat and humidity. The Sun's western limb was less interesting as seen in the next 6-panel mosaic. Only two active areas are present and no dramatic prominences. Surely you're not happy now y...

roundgowheels.blogspot.com

Transparent to Neutrinos: Flat Fielding

http://roundgowheels.blogspot.com/2015/06/flat-fielding.html

Posts From a Retired Professor. Tuesday, June 23, 2015. On June 7th puffy clouds passed by on a windy day. There were large gaps between clouds, and the temperature was 80 degrees. Although solar features were not particularly spectacular this day, I was eager to try two new procedures to improve my solar imaging. 400-frame videos were completed in 6.67 seconds! I was very pleased to have fast continuous video capture throughout my entire observing session. Notice the alternating dark/light vertical band...

roundgowheels.blogspot.com

Transparent to Neutrinos: April 2015

http://roundgowheels.blogspot.com/2015_04_01_archive.html

Posts From a Retired Professor. Tuesday, April 28, 2015. I had a wonderful time April 18th at the Northeast Astronomy Forum (NEAF) in Suffern, NY. Similar astronomical meetings are usually on the west coast, and the majority of equipment manufacturers seem to be from western states far from my eastern Virginia home. This relatively nearby event was a great opportunity to inspect equipment first hand, speak to several experts in person, and do side by side comparisons of solar observing equipment. I bough...

roundgowheels.blogspot.com

Transparent to Neutrinos: December 2014

http://roundgowheels.blogspot.com/2014_12_01_archive.html

Posts From a Retired Professor. Saturday, December 20, 2014. I thought my previous solar observing session would surely be the last of the year. But a combination of favorable conditions on December 17th made it hard to resist another look at the Sun. It was 54 degrees, with clear skies and a gentle wind, and the Sun had recently produced a swarm of sunspots. Wearing only a light jacket I set up my equipment and expected the usual efficient, trouble-free start of observations. Not this time! I've never u...

roundgowheels.blogspot.com

Transparent to Neutrinos: March 2015

http://roundgowheels.blogspot.com/2015_03_01_archive.html

Posts From a Retired Professor. Friday, March 27, 2015. Capturing images is only the first step towards producing a good picture. The camera's raw images need to be processed to remove flaws and bring out all the details. I downloaded three new image processing programs and spent hours learning to use them, mostly by trial and error. One of these programs, Star Tools, does a great job removing brightness gradients and vignetting which plague all my sky photos. I'll try stacking some images in my next post.

roundgowheels.blogspot.com

Transparent to Neutrinos: August 2015

http://roundgowheels.blogspot.com/2015_08_01_archive.html

Posts From a Retired Professor. Sunday, August 30, 2015. Meteorologists often fail to correctly forecast cloud cover. On August 25th one weather forecasting service predicted cloudy skies all day. Another forecasting service predicted completely clear skies and good seeing for a few hours after noon. The forecasts were contradictory! The clouds had almost covered the sky in the 45 minutes it took to get my equipment ready! This second image was processed differently than the first image. I think some...

roundgowheels.blogspot.com

Transparent to Neutrinos: July 2015

http://roundgowheels.blogspot.com/2015_07_01_archive.html

Posts From a Retired Professor. Friday, July 24, 2015. Views of my rather ordinary backyard sometimes yield surprises. At dawn on June 26th I found a young deer feeling secure enough to lie down in the grass beyond my telescope pad. Links to this post. Tuesday, July 14, 2015. On this rare day I continued trying to remove annoying interference fringes from images produced by my new camera. Flat fields removed vertical interference fringes, but made oval fringes worse. A tilt adjuster removed oval ...Only ...

roundgowheels.blogspot.com

Transparent to Neutrinos: Back in Business

http://roundgowheels.blogspot.com/2015/07/back-in-business.html

Posts From a Retired Professor. Tuesday, July 14, 2015. More than three weeks had passed since my last observing session. Almost every day had been cloudy, and the Sun had been mostly blank. Finally, on the morning of June 29th, conditions improved. The temperature was just below 80 degrees, the sky was clear, and there was no wind. That's about as good as it ever gets at this time of year. All interference fringes disappeared! Finally, here's a close up of the prominence on the southeastern limb. From n...

roundgowheels.blogspot.com

Transparent to Neutrinos: May 2015

http://roundgowheels.blogspot.com/2015_05_01_archive.html

Posts From a Retired Professor. Saturday, May 30, 2015. New ZWO ASI174MM Camera. It was warm, even borderline hot on May 5th, but I withstood the heat because I was anxious to try my new ZWO ASI174MM monochrome camera. The camera is the small red cylindrical device attached at prime focus on the back of my telescope in the images below. This is a very pleasant change from the DMK! There is a slight uneven illumination, particularly in the bottom right corner. The resolution here is much better than t...