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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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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Here are some nice videos of the Sun as taken by my honors student using our 12″ Meade, a Meade electronic eyepiece, and an H-alpha filter. The wind was brutal, so the images are rather shaky.
This first video highlights the granulation in the photosphere, and the glow of the chromosphere evident above [...]

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