Sunspots and New Toys

I got a Televue 5x Powermate whilst on a shopping trip to New York the other week and have finally got some time to have a play with it. This is sunspot 0892 (see Soho context image) taken on a hot June afternoon. Imaging in the day is certainly different to at night ... the laptop is too bright at night and too darn dark during the day! I ended up trying to image with a thick towel over my head and laptop - not condusive to keeping cool in the sun!!!

I was pleased to get fairly good focus considering the situation but the clouds came in before I could get a context shot with the 2x Barlow and prime focus. Ah well ... The smaller circular spots around 0892 are interesting - looking at images from just day or so before you can see that they are quite dynamic (as is the main spot). You can just about make out slight filamentary structures around the edge of the spot and the general granularity of the "surface" is quite prominent too.

I also took some Lunar image and a Jupiter shot with the 5x Powermate, but have not got around to processing them yet ... a job for another day!