Telescope Reviews: Solar Sunspots Return- Fly Me To The Sun!

Frand and Rich

Thank you. This was not my usual process to sketch. Nor is this my usual response as I had hoped, I have been on the road for over a month now. Yes, I have observed the sun in h-alpha for over ten years now. You would not believe how many earthly and space objects I have seen pass in front of the sun; thousands ot satellites, birds, geese at several thousand feet in flocks, etc. Wished I'd had a camera on the eyepiece! (;

Thanks Rich for reminding me of emailing Les about the Tilting Sun Program. It's really this new 'damned' "Windows Vista" that I was warned about.

even though my new Toshiba Satellite L555 Laptop is a state of the art computer. I am amazed by it to say the least, as it has everything, live camera Skype, built-in everything!

I may just add the hand sketch of the Tilting Sun again as I did before. So I am not with all my usual set up to sketch but I can do some now as I settle into the mountians here, although this was a small one and without Photohop I am learning the lesser MS Paint now after being spoiled with Photoshop for years if only to cut the frames and paste (it will force me to further straight art and no touch-ups or faked electronic clean-up to the art), not my usual forte' anyway; this first small solar sketch was done on the fly. I thought Dr. Tony Philips would display it in his Spaceweather.com front page today with all the other Solar Images (but not yet?) . . .

*Please excuse the long report:

I am trying to decide where I will retire. I am actually still in my original backyard so to speak. Staying in a resort community on the east slopes of the Cascade Mountains in Central Oregon about a 2 hour drive from where my established home was for 20 years on the west slopes of the Cascade Mountains in the east Portland suburban town of Troutdale at the Gateway to the Columbia River Gorge.

This last weekend I provided two lectures with all my art and astrophotography for this Cascade Mountain community, one for an audience of about 40 in a large affluent home in the area a few nights ago, Excerpts from motion film
the other presentation was outdoors which we did not film. One other gentleman within the Rose City Astronomers provided a pre-presentation before we allowed those attending to observe thorugh a 28 inch reflector under dark skies for the evening. Here is a photo of that instrument as seen at the Oregon Star Party, reported by Astronomy Magazine >
Dan Grays 28 inch telescope at the Oregon Star Party in early 2000's (date ?)

Although Central Oregon is known in the World at Night photo as having the largest dark sky area in the continental 48 states, many have never observed the night sky here. There is also a large observatory facility approx 30 miles to the south. The Sun River Nature Center.

http://www.sunrivernaturecenter.org/html/photo_gallery.html

It houses a 20 inch Ritchy Cretien and a plethora of other telescopes under a roll-off roof. I had seen the dome for years but was not aware of the newer room with roll-off roof and astronomy store. This facility is providing a star party tonight and I offered to assist them.

Although I just discovered their site photo gallery with above link, I took my own photos in a panorama two days ago with my twin alto ego assisting me [note distortion of perspective in flat roll-off roof as attached photos merged at center] >
Sun River Observatory with two Marks
As you may not have known, I was providing evening sidewalk astronomy for the past two weeks west of Portland at the 24 hour Ava Coffee House > Here is another posed and arranged work with actual photo insetr I took with a 5 mgpxl consumer grade camera through a Nexstar 5i. *Note the cultural diversity and gender minority (me). I entertianed what looks like a small group but actually hundreds are present here from night to night; in this photo it only looks like a small group of young people on that evening and other nights into the early dawn hours >
SmallGroupObservesMoonThroughNewstar5i At Ava Coffee House in Old Town Beaverton Oregon
AnotherNightAtAva
more later,

Mark

Edited by markseibold (09/23/09 05:09 PM)