As I mentioned in my first blog post, this year we began Sun Spotting, a program of solar viewing at Johnson Observatory at the Creation Museum:
The photograph shows a few of our guests participating in one of our Sun Spotting programs on a particularly hot day this summer. You can see cumulus clouds in the sky: we had to take a brief break when one of them would block our view. The telescope in the foreground is a Celestron 8 with a full-aperture solar filter to allow us to see sunspots. The telescope to the left in the background is our Teleview refractor equipped with an H-alpha filter to see prominences.
I’ve discovered that a low-power view at first is best, and then I gradually increase the magnification. Low power is particularly important when viewing prominences. Higher magnification makes the prominences appear larger, but their surface brightness and hence the contrast isn’t nearly as good as at lower power. We schedule the Sun Spotting program on busier days at the Creation Museum, but we can schedule groups upon request.
For those who get up early, Jupiter has reappeared in the morning sky. I’ve seen it on several mornings while running. If you look toward the east about 5:00 AM, you can’t miss it–it appears as a very bright star low in the sky. Mars is to its lower left, but it’s much fainter. These two planets gradually will move into the evening sky, Jupiter by the first of the year, and Mars by next spring.
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