H-alpha - 16th March

[Qualia]

First proper session with chalks and Sun this early afternoon. The B1200 also arrived this morning from Michael. Wondefully packaged and in excellent condition. The 12mm blocking filter certainly helps with its larger field of view to magnify and work within.

Needless to say, a beautiful set of proms and extremely dynamic active regions decorated the sun today. AR 2297 was very bright and alive, fizzing with pores amid a network of plages and filaments.

I will have to keep working on my technique, sharpening up on detail and clarity but I just fancied sharing with you guys my first ever h-alpha sketch. I used chalks on black paper and cotton buds to smooth out the textures. I found that I worked best with the 12.5mm Ortho giving a working magnification of 40x and a field of view of about 1º. 

[ghostdance]

Wow, beautiful! Now that *is* impressive, really captures the fiery nature of our gorgeous star - well done! Looking forward to more...

And I love the little comparative Earth

ps Where do you get the AR numbers? (new to whitelight solar question)

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Congrats on your first light with the new kit. AR 2297 is really nice today (even through the haze we had here)

[jkwhinfrey]

And thank you for sharing this moment :-) lovely scope (very jealous) and your... is it still a sketch if you're using chalks? I'll say yes... reminds me that I keep meaning to be a bit more adventurous that using pencil all the time.

I find that my Fujiyama 12.5mm is spending most of the time in my more modest PST. Orthos make nice solar eyepieces I think.

James

[Qualia]

Thank you for the kind comments It's great fun working with h-alpha the only problem is something called work gets in the way and really messes up the enjoyment. I have to dash now and won't be back to around midnight

Ghostdance, you might find this site handy. Click on the Sun on the left and you'll have the AR numbers etc

[JB80]

That's really nice Rob. Great to see a sketchers perspective, it's to easy to forget what the image looks like through the eyepiece sometimes.

Look forward to seeing some more Ha sketches.

[David Smith]

Lovely sketch Qualia. You should get some cracking views with that scope

[Qualia]

Thank you, David and Jarrod. Hopefully, it'll be another sunny morning before the storms really bite in. Looks like we're in for a stormy ride

[Pig]

Excellent sketch Rob  don't forget to send me the signed version