Grayskies

Today the sun had a big burp. In fact a huge burb. Almost hitting the highest scale measurement on the graph. A solar activity graph which measures the scale of a solar erruption, is guaged through a KP index. The strength of the KP index is on a scale of 1 to 9.
1 being - yeah ok so the sun is yawning, to 9 meaning - where do we run to?
This afternoon it hit a whopping 8.4
Meaning it will send a huge electro magnetic pulse our way.
Well Elon Musk. Be prepared to lose a few of your LEOS.
What else does this mean? Well, interruptions to radio, TV, and other comms.
But on the bright side, we may experience some good Aurora Australis. If you want to know what that is, easily search the web for “Aurora Australis”.
Further to this I have provided a link for anyone who is interested in seeing why Aurora’s are created and not only that, how we on this Earth are protected by our atmosphere and our internal magnetic field. It goes for about 4 minutes but well worth the time. Enjoy.

Space Weather and Earth's Aurora Aurora are colorful lights in the night time sky primarily appearing in Earth's polar regions. But what causes them? The culprit behind aurora is our own Sun...

I wish you all a very happy Christmas and a safe 2025.
Hopefully next year will provide plenty of opportunities to capture more of our universe beauty.

I am going to refer to this post as “part2” following my previous one from yesterday.
Regarding mind bending, and comprehending the awesomeness of our existence with relation to our universe.
Yesterday I presented an example of our Suns massive presence.
Check this out ……

Bêtelgeuse….

Less often reported is that Betelgeuse is BIG! – not too surprising given that it is classified as a red supergiant. So how big is it?
* It is so big that its diameter is about 1300 times that of our sun. - (picture illustration 1 and 2 below.)
* It is so big that if placed at our Sun’s location, the outer edge of its photosphere would reach out to Jupiter. - (picture 3 below)
* It is so big that it was the first star to have its angular diameter measured. Stars are so far away that they appear as pinpoints of light whose angular diameter cannot be determined. But Betelgeuse was big enough that 100 years ago, in 1920, it was the prime candidate to submit to measurement of its angular diameter.
😳😳😳😳😳

**pic 1 and 2 courtesy of the RASC, Vancouver Canada.
***pic 3 Image credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/E. O’Gorman/P. Kervella

On the 17th November the sun was very active again.
Here are two photos I captured with my Solar telescope gear, of exactly the same capture in mono. The one on the left being the original in mono, and the one on the right being an inverted version. Meaning all the shades of gray are reversed. ie… black to white, light gray to dark gray and so forth.
The reason for doing this is we can analyse variants and activity in quite an accurate way.
You will notice in the inverted photo that the long “streamer” like features tend to give a 3D effect in this presentation.
On a different note comes the mind bending comprehension of size.
Take a look at that long streamer thing we call a “filament”. This is actually a long fire trail that has erupted and is actually shooting out and away from the surface of the sun towards us. When these are seen on the Suns edge, they are referred to as “flares”.
Ok so now the mind bender. The Sun is 1.4 million kilometres in diameter. Now measure the length of that filament with relation to scale of the Suns diameter and we come close to around 600,000kms or there abouts.
So in distance, that long fire wall would easily wrap itself around, and consume our Earth roughly 15 times.
See what I mean 😳😳

Astrofest was a real blast again this year. It actually looked like the largest public attendance in years. Last night offered lots of awesome exhibitions, displays, and fun for everyone. There was alot of great photography talent on display too. Congratulations to all the winners, and commendations.
For me personally, I was very honoured to be presented with awards for two winning entries. A huge thanks to the judges for selecting my Solar Timelapse animation, and best planet photo of Venus as winners.

Finally!!
This image of our sun was quite the work in progress. The main reason it has taken so long to complete is, I knew it would be very time consuming. So I worked on it piece by piece when able. This is a very close capture of our sun comprising 42 separate images stitched together to create a moasaic in achieving the final result. 24 high res images for the orb, each photographing different sections of the sun, and 18 separate images of the periphery. Zoomed mosaics are very challenging, and this particular image has certainly been no exception. It has been the most time consuming “Solar” image I have worked on. And is extremely rewarding. Especially when the result is this beautiful display of energy and power our Sun has shown us.
I trust FB will not do it justice since it has a way of compressing images and dampening detail. However, if you are able to view this on a large monitor or screen, pan around and enjoy your tour to the sun.

Looking up at the sky tonight.
It has been considered that these rings around the moon means rain on the way. This phenomenon is created by the moons light passing through ice crystals high up in our atmosphere. The light is bent in a way, similar to looking through a glass of water. If this bending of light is symmetrical then a nice ring is formed.

This week our sun has been furocious. Only a small window of opportunity to image it this week due to clouds and bad seeing.
This demonstrates the power it can unleash. Dominating with sunspot cluster in the middle, measuring approx 280,000km across.
Just a side note to this, try and comprehend this…. According to a Solar statistical App I have, the solar “winds” that have ejected from these, have reached a velocity of 717kms per second.
This was captured on Tuesday, 7th May, with my dedicated solar imaging filter on the lens

This following edit was added Saturday evening 11th May……
Well, our sun, did indeed impress. As a result of this large area of turbulence, planet earth experienced one of its largest coverage and intense aurora in quite a long time. Providing both Northern and Southern hemispheres with a dazzling display of colours.

Many people would very likely not believe that you are able to see planets in the daytime, yet alone photograph them.
A couple of years ago I attempted “daytime” planetary photography with some ok results. So I got to thinking, I wonder how well Venus could be seen in the middle of the day. I have waited a long, long time for this opportunity to image Venus at its “prime time” to hopefully capture an almost full orb.
Following Venus’s orbital path, we will never see Venus as a full orb from Earth. I reckon this is as close to a full orb as it gets without being too close to the sun to see.
Anyway, all that being said here she is. Captured at 11:40am in the morning of 11 April 2024