Yesterday (7/28/2010) a massive prominence erupted from the surface of the sun! Images have been appearing all over the web of this massive event.

The images below were shot my amateur astronomer Jim Ferreira with his LS50F and DMK21 camera.  “Half a dozen or so very bright, very small spots that brightened and faded in less than a minute,” Ferreira described.

The lower image shows an awesome time laps of the prominence.  These images and many more of Jim Ferreira’s work can be seen on his website: Astrophotography by Jim Ferreira

The sun is really starting to show signs of life, a good sign for solar observers!  Be sure to check it out and keep sending in your images!

About Lunt Solar Systems LLC…

Lunt Solar Systems is a manufacturing and sales facility located in Tucson, Arizona. Lunt Solar design, fabricate, assemble, and test solar telescopes and solar filters. Whether you are looking for a dedicated solar telescope or a solar filter for attachment to you own astronomy telescope, we can help. Solar telescopes models start at $499 for an LS35T (telescope) or the only slightly more expensive LS50F (filter), all the way thru the 152T and the 160F. Solar observing is both fun and educational. Don’t miss out on Solar Maximum.

H-Alpha is red, Ca-K is blue, and for Jim Ferreira its all a view in black and white.  Located in Livermore, California, Jim has been producing high resolution H-Alpha images of the heavens for quite sometime.  From deep sky objects to our nearest star, his images bring back the old school feel of simplistic black and white while providing views with remarkable detail!

Photo by Jim Ferreira

While many of his images are moments frozen in time, not all are still!  Lately Jim has been dabbling with the art of time laps photography with the aid of his DMK21 video camera.  The ability to show massive prominences dancing across the sun is truly something to behold!  But how does he capture such images?  Currently Jim uses an LS50F attached to him SV102ED refractor, he someday hopes to add an LS75F or LS100F to use for higher magnification images and video while using the LS50F for full disk images.

Jim’s SV102ED with the LS50F and piggy backed white light scope.

Unlike other imagers Jim chooses to image solely in black and white, but why?  “I do very little viewing with an eyepiece”, he says.   Most if not all of his viewing time takes place at the monitor of his computer.  He keeps his images black and white to match what would be seen in the eyepiece.  “It’s also kind’a an old school thing”, says Jim.   His inspiration for black and white images dates back to his childhood while watching time laps images of solar flares in science class.

Jim continues to produce some amazing images, much of them can be seen on the popular astronomy forum website Cloudy Nights.  He also posts all his work including his dramatic night time images on his personal website: Astrophotography by Jim Ferreira.  Check it out and keep an eye out as he produces more of his signature black and white images!

Photo by Jim Ferreira

About Lunt Solar Systems LLC…

Lunt Solar Systems is a manufacturing and sales facility located in Tucson, Arizona. Lunt Solar design, fabricate, assemble, and test solar telescopes and solar filters. Whether you are looking for a dedicated solar telescope or a solar filter for attachment to you own astronomy telescope, we can help. Solar telescopes models start at $499 for an LS35T (telescope) or the only slightly more expensive LS50F (filter), all the way thru the 152T and the 160F. Solar observing is both fun and educational. Don’t miss out on Solar Maximum.

Waiting a long time....

These guys have been waiting a long time for another eclipse on the island. One can only imagine what the people on the island thought when the last eclipse occurred. 

What a fitting place for the event. Easter Island, 2,000 miles from the nearest civilization. The most remote island in the world hosting what has to be one of the rarest events in our Solar System. For those that are considered Eclipse Chaser’s, these events would seem to take them to the most remote areas of the Earth. I cannot think of a better excuse to do so…. 

The next eclipse will occur on the remote northern tip of Australia in November, 2012. 

The day I arrived on the Island it was raining heavily. Winds were 20-25 miles an hour. You can imagine my disappointment when getting off the plane. 24 hours to the event and time was moving way too fast.. Was there any chance of clear skies? Fortunately there was a very optimistic meteorologist on the flight. 

The afternoon before the Eclipse

He insisted that we would all get the see the eclipse. He was predicting bad weather up until about 2 hours prior to totality… Quite a statement at that point in time.. A few people complained that it was raining. The reply was that… “raining when it is supposed to rain is a good thing”.. 

We didn’t get much sleep that night. The upcoming event had everyone anxious, the wind was blowing hard thru the trees, and the rain was making quite a racket on the tin roof of the Casita we were staying in. Did I mention the cockerels? Those bird had absolutely NO sense of time, they cawed ALL night long. 

My alarm clock went off at 6:30AM!! I had to actually surf to the net to verify the time. It was absolutely pitch black outside and I wasn’t really in any mood to get out of bed. 

The wind was still howling thru the trees, but a quick peak out of the window and I caught a quick glimpse of a star between racing clouds. That quick glimpse was enough to provide the spark of optimism that I needed to hurry up and get ready. I reflected on what this day would be.. I had been preparing for over 6 months, hours an hours of practice with my telescope and imaging system, endured many many cramped hours of air flight, and many many hours of layovers in airports. Worth it? I certainly hoped so. 

2 hours and counting

The initial plan was to get all the equipment set up and ready the day before… Obviously that did not happen.  With about 2 hours to go the rain stopped and the skies cleared, the race began. One of my major issues was simply the lack of time to optimize the imaging systems. In Tucson it would generally take me about 2 hours to get everything tuned and dialed in. That was under ideal conditions. The intermittant cloud cover was certainly playing havoc with my ability to focus and fine tune the instruments. It was certainly one thing I had not planned for. 

As luck would have it I was very pleasantly surprised at just how good the seeing conditions were despite being at sea level and the humidity being in the 80% range. The pressure tuned 60mm came on band with only minor adjustments, and the LS50F double stack module seamed perfectly suited to the elevation. 

1 Hour and counting

Here is a shot of the telescope set up on the balcony of the Casita. The patio was built on a solid conctrete foundation that was about 2 foot thick. The mount is facing south and the Sun is about 50 degrees to the horizon. I was able to set up my laptop and controllers just inside the door to the room. 

In the background you can see the satellite dish for the feed to National Geographic. The dish is pointed to a satellite that was about 10 degrees above the horizon. The power supplies and computers for the dish are located inside the tent. I was relieved to see that the tent was still standing the morning of the 11th despite the very windy conditions. 

20 minutes. First test shot with processing

With about 20 minutes to go I was able to take and post process my first image of the Sun. This image does show some light banding. This needed to be fine tuned out with some rotation to the LS50F etalon on the front of the scope. All images are single frame capture with minimal post processing. I had been provided about a 1 hour window after fourth contact to get all the images sized, cropped, colored, and saved to smart card for upload to the National Geogrphic eclipse  special which aired “semi-live” that evening.

Despite all the practice and all the notes, the first few attempts at processing did not go well. During the first attempt I forgot to crop the image. During the second I cropped too tightly and there was an obvious white band on the edge of the image.. The pressure was on, and I was trying to stay focused. There were a few curious bystanders in the grass area in front of the patio who wandered in and out to see what I was doing. It was a little difficult to answer their questions and prepare for first contact. I hope I wasn’t too abrubt ;)

7 minutes past first contact

Well wouldn’t you know it… We had been tracking a very large cloud coming at us from off the ocean. We had hoped it woud simply pass us by. Unfortunately, at a few minutes prior to first contact it rolled right in front of the Sun. From inside the room I heard someone cry out “first contact!” I walked outside to take a look. The cloud was too dense to see the Sun. Estimation were that the cloud would be passed in 5-6 minutes.. We stood and waited. The very good news was that there was NOT a cloud in the sky after this one passed. During that time, the Sun did peak thru some small openings here and there.. Just enough to provide us with the assurance that the eclipse had begun.

This image was the first of a series of timelapse that I took. The camera was set up to take, download, and save and image every 3 seconds. Given the approximately 90 minutes from first contact to last contact, this was going to be a lot of files. The series needed to be broken into segments about 5 minutes long. Due to the lack of time in setting up, and the inability to star align, the Sun did move thru the field in that timeframe. In looking back, I think that allowing the Sun to transverse the field is a good thing. The motion of the Sun provides a level of authentisity that seemed to be lacking in the static video.

Almost half way

Everything was going very well for about the first 20 minutes. I was allocating file folders for the timelapse series. The exposure setting needed some slight adjustment between the sets, and the mount needed to be re-aligned such that the Sun was in the correct starting postion in the frame to allow for it’s movement accross the field..

However, at this point I noted that the image started to dive sharply toward the bottom. My intial reaction was that something had loosened. I quickly checked cables, and made sure clamps were tight.. Nothing helped.. HELP!!

Then the realization.. The mount had hit it’s hard stop. In theory all I needed to do was flip and re-align. That done, I watched the screen. The mount was no longer tracking… There was probably a logical explanation, there was probably a button I could press.. Which button???  No more time could be wasted.. Stay calm. I turned off the mount (that was a sickening feeling at the time) and placed everything back to pre-alignment position. I worked thru the paddle. Location, time, date, daylight savings?? Now here is a good question.. Easter Island is in the Southern Hemesphere, do they jump back when we are going forward?? Set to S. Hem, set to Solar tracking, quick align, wait,,,, goto Solar System, find Sun, go, yes… GO!!!…. Slightly off, move the head onto the Sun with the paddle, remember you are now 180 degrees upside down, move camera 180 degrees rotation, re-focus, Sun now going right to left not left to right… Start timelapse… Success!!!  Time lost was about 4 minutes.

75% and looking good!!

It’s probably more like 65% in this picture.. I had calmed down from the previous issue and was back to filing and re-aligning between timelapse….. However, it was at this point that a small warning screen appreared in the middle of my image capture screen. The window had “warning!” at the top, but the window itself was blank? I tried to “x” (close) the window, but it would come right back. I could move the little window around the screen, but I could never read the text.. I had no idea what was wrong…. HELP!!!

I went to the file folder where the current images were being stored.. ARHHHH!! the images were blank. The beginning images were there, but the last images were totally blank!!

I tried to close the capture software window in the attempt to close the software and re-open.. The software would “beep” and the window would flash!!! (I won’t type what I was saying at this point ;) ctrl+alt+delete, close program. That worked. Re-open program, wait,,,,, stay calm, re-connect to camera, re-establish the pre-set timelapse settings, check destination folder, make note of bad files for immediate removal… GO!!! Total time lost, about 4 minutes..

The Ring and Beads

It was fairly smooth sailing from there on out. Exposure setting did get difficult to predict. The exposure setting for this shot is about 3 seconds. Compare that to .007 seconds at the start. The slight movement of the Sun in the field did cause some blurring of the image, and I all I can say is it was probably a MUCH better image thru an eyepiece than with the camera.

This image is about 1% to totality.

However, I am very pleased by the results. I now have 5 minutes of actual practice, and I already have many ideas on how to improve the images for future eclipse events. All in all I only lost about 8 minutes of the eclipse footage.

I was reminded of what a friend told me while I was at RTMC. “Don’t forget to look up and experience the eclipse”.. It was right at this moment that I stopped looking at the PC and stepped outside. WOW! There aren’t words to describe the feeling. The first ring, the beads, the minutes of totality when the world around you becomes earily quiet and dark, very dark.. A 360 degree Sunset low on the horizon, street lights flickering on, not even a craw from a cockerel. Simply quiet… The second ring, and a uproar from the people around us.. It was an emotional moment for many. We had witnessed an eclipse despite all the odds.. And what a wonderful eclipse it was.

July 11th 2010 Sunset

I am going to bring this blog to a close with this image of the Sunset, July 11th 2010.

For all the months of preparation for what was to most, a 5 minute experience, was well worth it. I had alot more to write, and alot more image to share. I am working on the timelapse video that will be shown in Hydrogen-alpha. These images were taken with an LS60T/PT/DS50F. I am proud to say that this system met my every expectation and as you can see from the images performed beautifully.  

This Sunset reminds me of the slight depression I was feeling when I took it. All the anxiety, stress, anticipation…..  Gone.

The joy at knowing I had done everything that I had set out to do.

About Lunt Solar Systems LLC…

Lunt Solar Systems is a manufacturing and sales facility located in Tucson, Arizona. Lunt Solar design, fabricate, assemble, and test solar telescopes and solar filters. Whether you are looking for a dedicated solar telescope or a solar filter for attachment to you own astronomy telescope, we can help. Solar telescopes models start at $499 for an LS35T (telescope) or the only slightly more expensive LS50F (filter), all the way thru the 152T and the 160F. Solar observing is both fun and educational. Don’t miss out on Solar Maximum.

Yesterday, amateur astronomer Brian Shelton imaged the sun with his LS152T and what an image it was!  The images looks as if you are orbiting the sun itself!

Great job Brian!

Its amazing the images we are getting so please keep sending them in!

About Lunt Solar Systems LLC…

Lunt Solar Systems is a manufacturing and sales facility located in Tucson, Arizona. Lunt Solar design, fabricate, assemble, and test solar telescopes and solar filters. Whether you are looking for a dedicated solar telescope or a solar filter for attachment to you own astronomy telescope, we can help. Solar telescopes models start at $499 for an LS35T (telescope) or the only slightly more expensive LS50F (filter), all the way thru the 152T and the 160F. Solar observing is both fun and educational. Don’t miss out on Solar Maximum.

This past Saturday was the SCAE at Oceanside Photo and Telescope!  Thank you to all who came out and saw the Lunt booth!

The event has been given a small write up and some photos in the North County Times.  Check it out!:  LINK

About Lunt Solar Systems LLC…

Lunt Solar Systems is a manufacturing and sales facility located in Tucson, Arizona. Lunt Solar design, fabricate, assemble, and test solar telescopes and solar filters. Whether you are looking for a dedicated solar telescope or a solar filter for attachment to you own astronomy telescope, we can help. Solar telescopes models start at $499 for an LS35T (telescope) or the only slightly more expensive LS50F (filter), all the way thru the 152T and the 160F. Solar observing is both fun and educational. Don’t miss out on Solar Maximu