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The corn is starting to dry out, so it must be time for the Fall semester to start up again. Here at JCCC, though, the work doesn’t stop just because its Summertime. This past summer term, I had an honors student that worked on astrophotography and differential photometry. Both were fun projects, and I’ll write [...]

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Rather than using the SBIG ST-8 CCD camera, I opted for my Nikon D90 for these photos. In some respects its better, in other ways not so much. First stop: The Sun. In this image, you can see the Sun’s chromosphere and a small prominence on the left side of the image. The camera doesn’t [...]

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The Evening With The Stars this spring had a great turn out. Thanks to all who came out. Leo gave a great talk, and I’ve heard from many of the attendees that they really enjoyed the evening. Unfortunately, the weather was not as cooperative and clouds ruined our planned observing. We’ll try again in the [...]

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The JCCC Science Division presents anEVENING WITH THE STARS April 4th at 7:00pm in the Craig Auditorium, GEB 233 Leo “Bud” Johns of the Astronomical Society of Kansas City will give a presentation on Kings and Queens; Myths and Monsters: A Tour of the Spring Sky Followed by night sky observing, weather permitting, with Prof. [...]

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We’ve been very lucky this week. Its been sunny and warm every single day, and is likely to remain that way for the duration! This also means that there’s been some terrific lighting for pictures in the morning (the one time I’ve actually been free). Here’s a picture of the Moscone Center [...]

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The Ulysses spacecraft is slowly dying, but its not quite finished yet! Its demise was slated for July 1, 2008, but even without its primary X-Band transmitter whose heatsink doubles as the heater for the fuel lines, its been surviving. Here’s the latest update on the health of the only spacecraft ever to explore the [...]

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Here is a mosaic of the first quarter moon taken this last Wednesday, March 5th. The individual images were collected with a Nikon D90 threaded to the Meade 12″ SCT. The separate images were then assembled using GIMP, an open-source image manipulation program.

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Here are two mosaics of the Sun stitched together with images collected on Wednesday afternoon. These images were taken with a Nikon D90 through a 12″ Meade SCT fitted with an H-alpha filter. The first mosaic is of the full disc of the Sun. There are some details, but the glare of the photosphere, even [...]

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Ok, it’s not the greatest picture, but we still are dealing with the wind shaking the telescope. You can see a couple of sunspots from, though. These are spots associated with the new solar cycle, #24. Note their latitude. Sunspots early in a solar cycle will form at high latitudes at first. Later in the [...]

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