Solar Prominence

mbz

That prominence hangin on at the Sun limb today. It is not a very big ptominence, yet it is still few times bigger than the Earth.:1drink

Awais Yaqub

great work

mbz

Thank you, Awais.

Skippy

Where Exactly Were You Standing ???

mbz wrote:

That prominence hangin on at the Sun limb today. It is not a very big ptominence, yet it is still few times bigger than the Earth.

Ohhhhhh that is so cool first thing that entered my head was where the heck was he standing ???? Skippy (Australia)

mbz

Skippy wrote:

Ohhhhhh that is so cool first thing that entered my head was where the heck was he standing ???? Skippy (Australia)

Thank you, Skippy. I cannot remember where I was at, when I took the picture. Was it Moon or ISS or maybe my back yard I do remember how I added the Earth to my picture in PS.

wxwax

Neat sun shot.

I think folks would be interested to hear about your technique.

ajgauthier

do you remember what database on the web you got the image from?

not to be rude...There are amateur astronomers who DO take really cool pictures of the sun using special equipment, filters, and CCDs using small telescopes (12" and beyond), and H-alpha technologies (or like SOHO's He II line).

If you did orginally take the image, KUDOS! great work! please share with us the cool adventure and hard work! There are programs where the public can go and use research grade solar telescopes for learning experiences and walk away with images they took during the event.

If you found it on the web and altered it...then please reference the original source as to not violate copyright. I saw a very similar image (but not the same) on Astronomy Picture of the Day using a pasted in Earth to show how large the features were.

Sorry to rain on your parade of praise, but please, if you aren't posting your own pictures, then please reference (even if you meant it to be a cool thing to share, about a solar prominence, to show how big/neat it was...)

Adrienne

ChrisJ

Heh, I was just going to ask how big the 'scope was.

It's definitely a nice composition... care to share the details?

mbz

ajgauthier wrote:

do you remember what database on the web you got the image from?

not to be rude...There are amateur astronomers who DO take really cool pictures of the sun using special equipment, filters, and CCDs using small telescopes (12" and beyond), and H-alpha technologies (or like SOHO's He II line).

If you did orginally take the image, KUDOS! great work! please share with us the cool adventure and hard work! There are programs where the public can go and use research grade solar telescopes for learning experiences and walk away with images they took during the event.

If you found it on the web and altered it...then please reference the original source as to not violate copyright. I saw a very similar image (but not the same) on Astronomy Picture of the Day using a pasted in Earth to show how large the features were.

Sorry to rain on your parade of praise, but please, if you aren't posting your own pictures, then please reference (even if you meant it to be a cool thing to share, about a solar prominence, to show how big/neat it was...)

Adrienne

Thank you for the responds, everybody.
Adrienne, I'm amazed how much you know: SOHO, APOD, H-alpha and so on.:):
I took the picture myself. I would have never posted somebody else picture. As a matter of fact I took many pictures of prominences and some of them were published at SpaceWeather.com. SpaceWeather it is something as APOD. One of my picture won SOHO contest for the month. It was not a prominence, but just a sunset.
Now I'll tell you what it takes to take such a picture. I have a small solar telescope PST with H-alpha filter. I take pictures afocaly, which means I put my camera to the eyepice of my scope. My scope is very simple. It costs $500 and could be mounted at any photographic tripod. It does not give me good surface details, yet I can see prominences very well.
Please, fill free to ask me other questions.

Here's the link to one of my prominence pictures at SpaceWeather.com

http://hea-www.harvard.edu/hrc.ARCHIVE/2006/2006048.000000-2006048.240000/SpaceWeather/index.html

I'm Mila Zinkova.

wxwax

Thanks Mila!

Any chance you could take a photo of your set-up so we could see it? I find this fascinating.

ajgauthier

mbz wrote:

Thank you for the responds, everybody.
Adrienne, I'm amazed how much you know: SOHO, APOD, H-alpha and so on.:):
I took the picture myself. I would have never posted somebody else picture. As a matter of fact I took many pictures of prominences and some of them were published at SpaceWeather.com. SpaceWeather it is something as APOD. One of my picture won SOHO contest for the month. It was not a prominence, but just a sunset.
Now I'll tell you what it takes to take such a picture. I have a small solar telescope PST with H-alpha filter. I take pictures afocaly, which means I put my camera to the eyepice of my scope. My scope is very simple. It costs $500 and could be mounted at any photographic tripod. It does not give me good surface details, yet I can see prominences very well.
Please, fill free to ask me other questions.

Here's the link to one of my prominence pictures at SpaceWeather.com

http://hea-www.harvard.edu/hrc.ARCHIVE/2006/2006048.000000-2006048.240000/SpaceWeather/index.html

I'm Mila Zinkova.

hi Mila! Thanks for posting details Glad you weren't offended by my questioning it, it's just that without details of something cool like that, it just seemed at first glance it was an image taken from somewhere. So, my apologies for calling it to question...

It's really neat to do sun photography. I know a lot b/c I am in the field of astronomy education, and also an amateur astronomer/instructor of night sky astronomy. While in grad school I had the great pleasure of using an H-alpha system on our 14" telescope...pretty darn cool! Also, just using a solar filter over a small telescope (8" works well) to take images of large sunspots is also pretty neat.

Awesome, post more! Do you do regular astrophotography too?

I just looked up PST's --- does yours have changeable eyepieces? If so, you may be able to rig up a T-adapter and eyepieces right to the PST...you may get a larger field of view for the image and also use eyepieces to magnify areas. Not sure if the PST eyepiece setup is like a regular Schmidt-Cassegrain where you can screw in a T-adapter for a camera. ???

Adrienne

mbz

wxwax wrote:

Thanks Mila!

Any chance you could take a photo of your set-up so we could see it? I find this fascinating.

Thank you, Sid.
My setup is simple. I have PST on tripod from my Nexstar 800GTL. I mostly use an eyepice that came together with that Nexstar, which is 10 mm.
The tripod is good. It is automatic with remote control and it is easy to keep the sun in focus.

mbz

It is how the box of PST looks

mbz

ajgauthier wrote:

hi Mila! Thanks for posting details Glad you weren't offended by my questioning it, it's just that without details of something cool like that, it just seemed at first glance it was an image taken from somewhere. So, my apologies for calling it to question...

It's really neat to do sun photography. I know a lot b/c I am in the field of astronomy education, and also an amateur astronomer/instructor of night sky astronomy. While in grad school I had the great pleasure of using an H-alpha system on our 14" telescope...pretty darn cool! Also, just using a solar filter over a small telescope (8" works well) to take images of large sunspots is also pretty neat.

Awesome, post more! Do you do regular astrophotography too?

I just looked up PST's --- does yours have changeable eyepieces? If so, you may be able to rig up a T-adapter and eyepieces right to the PST...you may get a larger field of view for the image and also use eyepieces to magnify areas. Not sure if the PST eyepiece setup is like a regular Schmidt-Cassegrain where you can screw in a T-adapter for a camera. ???

Adrienne

Adrienne, you're lucky to have such a nice scopes with H-alpha.
I used T-adapter on my Nexstar to photograph the Moon (prime focus) and Saturn (eyepice projection) . I've never used T adapter with PST, but I can and I do change eyepices on PST.
I'm not using my PST very often any more. We are in solar minimum now.:D
The picture I posted was taken 2 days ago just because I knew there was a big sunspot 904 at the sun and I wanted to see, if i can see a flare. There was no flare, but was that prominenece, so I took few pictures.
Now I'm more interested in Atmospheric Optics photography (Green Flashes, Solar Coronae, the Spectre of the Brocken and so on.)

wxwax

Excellent, thanks Mila. I can't believe the set-up is so compact.

wxwax

Hey Mila,

If you were ever so inclined, I bet dgrinners would looove to have a tutorial on how to shoot the heavens.

Maybe starting with types of equipment, then conditions, then what kids of shots you can hope to get, and how to get them.

If you were to do it, it would go in dgrin's How To section. The link for How To is at the top of this page, along the banner, in blue.

Let me know if you're interested. I know for a fact a lot of dgrinners would appreciate a tutorial.

BrettG

I'd love to see a tutorial. I may pick up a t ring for my ETX 90 and try some stuff.

Just a note for everybody (maybe obvious) - don't point your lens/telescope at the sun without a proper filter over the big end (the objective lens I think it's called). Just a filter over the eyepiece is not safe.

mbz

wxwax wrote:

Hey Mila,

If you were ever so inclined, I bet dgrinners would looove to have a tutorial on how to shoot the heavens.

Maybe starting with types of equipment, then conditions, then what kids of shots you can hope to get, and how to get them.

If you were to do it, it would go in dgrin's How To section. The link for How To is at the top of this page, along the banner, in blue.

Let me know if you're interested. I know for a fact a lot of dgrinners would appreciate a tutorial.

Well, Sid.
I'm not very much of an astrophotographer. As I said I did take pictures of the Moon, Saturn and few solar prominences. I also photographed a total Solar Eclipse and that's about it.
I'm going to give the link to everybody, who is interested in astrophotography. That link is to Cloudy Nights forums. They have everything: solar observing, Lunar observing, deep sky observing and so on, and so on. They also have many astrophotography forums. They are all very, very freindly and most of them are so much better than I am in astro photography. Sometimes I post my pictures there too.
Sorry for the link instead of tutorial, but I really believe everybody, who's interesed will be much better off with those forums than with my tutorials.
Still I'm gladly will respond any specific question you could have.

Here's the link. I hope it will work for you. You must register (no fee) to post, but you can read and view posts without registration.
http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?Cat=

ajgauthier

mbz wrote:

Well, Sid.
I'm not very much of an astrophotographer. As I said I did take pictures of the Moon, Saturn and few solar prominences. I also photographed a total Solar Eclipse and that's about it.
I'm going to give the link to everybody, who is interested in astrophotography. That link is to Cloudy Nights forums. They have everything: solar observing, Lunar observing, deep sky observing and so on, and so on. They also have many astrophotography forums. They are all very, very freindly and most of them are so much better than I am in astro photography. Sometimes I post my pictures there too.
Sorry for the link instead of tutorial, but I really believe everybody, who's interesed will be much better off with those forums than with my tutorials.
Still I'm gladly will respond any specific question you could have.

Here's the link. I hope it will work for you. You must register (no fee) to post, but you can read and view posts without registration.
http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?Cat=

I would also highly recommend the book "Astrophotography for the Amateur" by Michael Covington. Very thorough, descriptive, and instructive.

Adrienne