29. 01.19 Solar

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Tuesday: 28F overnight. 33-35F ext. 36-38 int. Early sunshine teased me into going over to the observatory. Whereupon it immediately clouded over with only brief glimpses through the overcast.

11.15am. 33F ext. 36F inside the dome. The telescopes and mounting were covered in white frost but the covered objectives and boxed eyepieces seemed to be clear.

12.00. I can see one small spot near the western limb in white light @ 83x in the 7". Not enough light in H-alpha to see more than the disk so far.

12.22. A clearing confirmed the small dark spot in H-a @ 80x. In white light the spot has a northward penumbral extension longer than the spot itself. A lesser grey extension southwards. A smaller spot is nearby on a line with the center of the disk. As the cloud cleared again it started snowing through the observation slit and I had to close up!

12.32. H-a. A dark triangle has appeared nearer the limb beside the spot. A large pale patch is firming up around the spot extending more towards the center of the disk. A constant struggle with the clouds crossing the image. Not to mention eye floaters. I am really missing my binoviewers! TS has just confirmed receipt for checking the [factory] misalignment. 

12.50. 39F int. Cloud getting thicker again and the wind is blowing through the slit. Hands getting rather cold from typing on the cold laptop. As soon as the dome lightens with sunshine I dash over to look through both eyepieces. The dome has to be moved on at intervals using the crank and friction wheel. This manual drive system works extremely well with very little effort required to rotate the dome in either direction.

I was lucky to have a grippy polyurethane wheel of the correct size. The long wooden lever, with heavy weight attached, did all the rest. In providing a continuous and smooth drive despite the variations in level of the dome base ring. Rebuilding the dome "upstairs" undid the original care in leveling while working down on the ground.

13.00. Solid cloud and cooling fast! Going indoors to warm up and have lunch. My old [black] down jacket may be bombproof for working in. But isn't the warmest for sitting around waiting for the cloud to clear at these temperatures. I wore my walking boots today and felt the benefit in warmer feet. My safety work shoes offer protection against things being dropped but aren't warm enough.

While I was waiting for a clearing I checked my site coordinates in AWR on the IH2. I was showing west instead of east! So I re-entered my observatory's longitude figures from Google Earth with a negative sign and was rewarded with an Easterly location on the IH2 screen.

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