The Sun on January 1, 2012, as seen through the 50 mm f/4 Stellarvue finderscope mounted on the 150 mm reflector telescope that I use for doing visual sunspot counts. The image was acquired using a humble Meade Lunar Planetary Imager (LPI) with an inexpensive black polymer filter across the main lens of the finderscope.

On this day, the seeing was quite poor with high cirrus clouds passing across the face of the Sun.  In any event, the day’s relative sunspot number by visual count (through the 150 mm scope) was 43.  This image shows several small sunspot groups.  The larger telescope that I used to visually count  sunspots was able to show many individual sunspots within each group.

Image & Equipment Details:
1 January 2012
18:34:02 UT
Stellarvue 50 mm f/4 Finderscope
Rainbow Symphony Black Polymer Solar Filter
Meade LPI 60 frames
Seeing poor (through high cirrus clouds)
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Image captured using K3CCDTools.

I hauled the C8 and Meade LPI out into the backyard two nights ago to get some images of Jupiter.  Here are two:  one from the beginning of the session and the other from the end.

 

00:21 UT

In this view, south is at the top and west is to the right.  The Great Red Spot (GRS) is moving out of view on Jupiter’s western limb (upper right).

Jupiter’s innermost moon Io is just barely visible to the left as a faint reddish dot.  It was actually quite easily visible in the eyepiece as a bright starlike object.

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01:28 UT

In this shot, taken a little over an hour later, the Great Red Spot has rotated out of view.

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Image & Equipment Details:
Celestron C8  203 mm f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope
3X Barlow
Meade LPI
Seeing 5/10  Trans 3/5
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Images captured using K3CCDTools.