New Sunspot

It was a quiet day for solar prominences, but a new sunspot showed up.  This was my first attempt to photograph sunspot in hydrogen-alpha.  The seeing wasn't great because, well, it's July in Alabama.  In any case, this one was pretty interesting to look at through the eyepiece as there's a lot of activity around the spot.  Though the spot itself appears small relative to the rest of the sun, it's about 71% of the size of Earth.  

Photo Details

July 26, 2020

Coronado PST Telescope

NexImage10 Camera

Image Acquisition iCap2.4

Y800 Codec
Image Stacking in AutoStakkert
Wavelet Filtering in Registax
Final Adjustments in Photoshop

Comet Neowise

We had a beautiful evening to find and photograph Comet Neowise.  This comet was first discovered on March 27, 2020 by an asteroid-hunting telescope currently orbiting the Earth.  It's currently traveling about 144,000 mph which is about twice as fast as the Earth's velocity around the Sun and we won't see it around here for another 6800 years.  

Photo Details

July 29, 2020

Nikon D3100 Camera

13 subframes at 10 seconds/frame

Total Exposure Time = 2 minutes, 10 seconds
Image Stacking in Deep Sky Tracker
Final Image Processing in PhotoShop