[Theme] Show us your best moon (and solar system) images

[armando_m]

Thank you all for your comments

[armando_m]

Roughlly measuring the number of pixels of the flare at about 4 o'clock, it is 4.7% of the solar diameter
the sun diameter is 1.4 million kms
earth diameter is 12,647 kms
so the flare is 5.1 times the size of our planet

[Øivind Tøien]

+6 to the other ones, very nice prominences - congrats and thanks so much with sharing your experience with us Armando!!

The temporary removal of the solar filter seems a risky operation even though clouds? During a somewhat cloudy phase of the past Venus transit, I used a unexposed developed film as a makeshift solar filter between the mirror lens and the teleconverter (not for viewing!) and it partly melted!  [Edit: Also see Birna's post today with the classic Venus transit image and story: https://nikongear.net/revival/index.php?topic=10931.msg198748#msg198748 ]

[Ann]

Armando:
What a wonderful photographic record of what must be an unforgettable experience.

I have experienced three partial solar eclipses but never a total one.

[Øivind Tøien]

Post eclipse new moon captured in the air on my flight north from San Jose, CA in a not too tight conjunction with Jupiter at very late dusk, captured with 55mm f/3.5 @ f/4.5 on D500, 1/3 s, ISO 640, exposure corrected post. There is even a hint of the Jupiter moons in the full sized version. Of course I also had to try a detail of the dark side of the moon with the 300mm f/4 PF @ f/4.5, 1/4 s, ISO400.

[Øivind Tøien]

The sun was quite a freckled yesterday.
300PF+TC14E+TC-20E III filtered with Baader AstroSolar ND5 film on ASI678MC astro camera. Mosaic of multiple overlapping stacks, each 30% best of 1000 frames stacked in Autostakkert 4 and sharpened in Wavesharp. The stich in Microsoft ICE worked pretty well once I removed one offending capture. (Open in new tab for larger version.)

[Øivind Tøien]

...And the aurora resulting from activity of some of those active regions days earlier.

[Nasos Kosmas]

Very nice captures Oivid

[Øivind Tøien]

Thanks Nasos.

[Akira]

The sun was quite a freckled yesterday.
300PF+TC14E+TC-20E III filtered with Baader AstroSolar ND5 film on ASI678MC astro camera. Mosaic of multiple overlapping stacks, each 30% best of 1000 frames stacked in Autostakkert 4 and sharpened in Wavesharp. The stich in Microsoft ICE worked pretty well once I removed one offending capture. (Open in new tab for larger version.)

Wow, this is an amazingly detailed surface of the sun!  In addition to the black spots, the intricate patterns of the convection (?) can be visible!

Well worth viewing large!  Thank you for sharing!

[Øivind Tøien]

Thanks, Akira. Yes the air was very clear and the seeing was well above average , as indicated by Astrospheric and also by the lack of wiggles around the edge in individual frames caused by atmospheric disturbances. The grainy structure that looks like sensor noise is actual surface features of the sun.

[Edit:] The SpaceWeather site reported yesterday that those sunspots blasted again with "A SUPER-SYMPATHETIC SOLAR FLARE"  -- "Today's sympathetic flare was not a simple pair but a complex quartet covering much of the sun's Earth-facing hemisphere. This makes it 'super-sympathetic.' ":
https://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=23&month=04&year=2024

[ColinM]

In addition to the other images, I wanted to comment on this

Post eclipse new moon captured in the air on my flight north from San Jose, CA

The image is beautiful
Also using 1/3 s from an aeroplane seems to have come out remarkably well Øivind

[Øivind Tøien]

Thanks Colin, the images are very close to the visual appearance which was quite striking - I hardly ever recall earthshine on the moon being that pronounced. It took quite a few tries to get something useful. Modern jets are quite stable if there is no turbulence, so I think it helped bracing without letting the camera get in direct contact with the craft which could transmit vibrations from the engines. Of course the image with the 300 PF was helped by the full VR mode.

[Øivind Tøien]

Watch for more aurora tonight if you live at latitudes where it still gets dark! There are already plenty of reports from "Lower 48" in the US, https://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=11&month=05&year=2024 and I now notice it already got all over the news. The source of the the strong CMEs is the behemoth of an active region, AR3664 to the lower right, which is visible just with the aid of solar protection glasses. Seeing was pretty mediocre and did not inspire use of stacking at higher magnification. I am still working on assembling the Baader astrosolar film filter for the 500PF, so I just used it with TC-14E III and step-down rings to use my existing similar 77mm filter on D500 to get a shot before AR3664 rotates out of view. I hoped for better seeing later today but clouds came in so I will have to do with this. (Open in new tab to display larger.)

I am not sure I have ever seen an aurora forecast as hot as the one shown below.

[Akira]

Hey, Øivind, the moment I learned about the extreme solar flares, I was sure that you were going to post the image of "the source"!

Unfortunately, I don't live in the altitude where the aurora can be observed.

I wish you or any NG members would post some images of aurora!