My Sol Delight

by Michael Swartz

I couldn't resist the clear blue sky with that big bright star shining on my face today. So I found a nice place to park in the early afternoon, setup the tripod and scope, screwed on the H-A filters, popped in the binoviewer and Wow!!! What a view!.

Around 3:30pm I noticed a very large prominence that looked much like a fountain or large whale tail with some additional swirling stuff nearby. Most impressive. I am using a Takahashi Sky90, Coronado SolarMax90 with doublestack module and Denkmeier binoviewers with a pair of 16mm Naglers. The churning and bubbling on the surface was really awesome. Over the course of an hour I noticed subtile changes in both surface detail, filiments and prominences.

The high winds created a lot of rippling around the edge of the solar disk much like I see when observing the moon on a windy night. I would assume that it also detracted from the sharpness of the surface detail. But even with the winds, after a month of cloudy skies, it was such a pleasure to finally be able to use my new gear without the obstruction of clouds. Maybe we'll actually get clear and calm skies? Am I asking too much?

Such fun.

I plan on making it to Montebello on Wednesday afternoon to get in some solar viewing before nightfall and then I'll break out the Obsession and wait for dark.

Looking forward to seeing you there.