Star trails and Geminids

A clear moonless night offered a chance to capture some Geminid meteor trails.  A few showed up during this two-hour exposure between 9 and 11 pm, but nothing spectacular.

Equipment: Olympus E-M1iii + Leica 9mm f/1.7 lens.  Location: Santa Fe back yard.

 

Santa Fe sun

 Sadly, I am now back in Santa Fe for the winter.  Today was relatively warm (10–20 deg F warmer than Creede) and sunny, so solar photography was an obvious choice for experimenting with some new equipment configurations.  

Equipment: TS-Optics 50mm ED f/4 refractor, Lunt Solar Wedge, Baader Solar Continuum Filter, ZWO ASI178mm monochrome camera, and Sightron Japan Alt-Az mount.

 The large sunspot group that has lately been traversing the face of the sun is now rotating out of view on the extreme lower right-hand edge.  This is a false color image.  The ASI78mm camera is monochrome, and the Baader filter is a narrow band (7.5 nm) filter centered on 540 nm.  So realistically, this image should be green, but yellowish just looks more natural.

Here is what the equipment setup looks like:

 

Based on the ephemeris value for the sun's diameter (1945 arcsec) and the measured pixel width (839 pixels) of the solar image, the derived focal length for this scope is 213 mm, which would make it f/4.3.

One more look at the Cold Moon

The full moon occurred Thursday (04 Dec), but on Friday night it was still 98% illuminated.  These images were captured with Olympus cameras and an AT80EDT refractor and a Laowa 7.5mm f/2 lens. 

Cold Moon encore over Snowshoe Mountain, 05 Dec.

There were some thin clouds visible near the northern horizon, but it didn't look like they would be a problem.  This is how it looked at the beginning of a planned 2-hr star-trail exposure:

Laowa 7.5mm, 10 sec.

 Some clouds moved in less than an hour later, so I ended the exposure at 54 min.  The moving clouds add an unusual element to the composition.

 

Cold Moon, active sun

The full moon of December is traditionally called the "Cold Moon".  An appropriate nickname - the temperature is already in the single-digits Fahrenheit two hours before midnight.  This year it is also a perigean full moon (aka "super moon"), so it is noticeably brighter than average.

Cold Moon rising over Snowshoe Mountain, 04 December.

Cold Moon illumination.  Laowa 7.5mm f/2 lens, 2-hr live composite.

A large sunspot group is traversing the sun.  

 

White light. AT80EDT refractor + Lunt solar wedge.

Hydrogen-Alpha light.  Lunt LS50THa with double-stacked etalons.

Even though it is winter, heat currents in the air make it difficult to get sharp single images of the sun during the middle of the day.

December-01 moonlight star trails

 The landscape was lit up by the 11.6-day moon.  There was a gusty wind blowing, which required the camera to be set up on the leeward side of a shed for protection.  Temperature was 11° F heading toward an eventual low of 1.4° F the next morning.

Equipment: Olympus E-M1iii + Rokinon 7.5mm f/3.5 fisheye lens.

2-hr live composite mode

 

1-hr live composite.

New sunspots

A large sunspot group has just rotated into view.  This group is so large that it was visible to the NASA Perserverance Rover on Mars, which was not designed for high-resolution solar observation.   Who knows, more northern-lights displays may be in our near future.

Equipment: Olympus E-M1iii + AT80EDT refractor + Lunt Solar Wedge + ND0.6 filter.

 

Star trails on Thanksgiving evening

There were some thin clouds, mostly to the south, that had the potential to ruin this 78-min exposure.  However, it looks like it was mostly successful.  The landscape was illuminated by the first-quarter moon.  

Equipment: Olympus E-M1iii + Rokinon 7.5mm f/3.5 fisheye lens.