*
Sunday:
Woke to find last night's roaring gales had opened the shutters by
about a foot. I have two sliding bolts to secure them in the open and
closed positions but made the locating holes exactly the right size.
Which means they are quite hard to locate and are just above eye height.
This is not a good idea! I shall have to shove the drill into each hole
and open them out enough to ensure the bolts can slide fully home
without any effort or doubt.I'd better go over and see how wet it is in there! I was extremely lucky that it hadn't rained overnight. Not even a drop of dew.Nor had the wind inflated the dome through the open slit. That might have been very damaging but was avoided by parking facing to the south as usual.
0900 43/40F early cloud has cleared to bright sunshine.
WL: Small sun spot at my 3.00. I have had to drop the hatch and stand on the crate because the sun is still rather low in the south east at 18°altitude.
At this point I wrote half a page of text on the H-alpha view but it never updated. Timed out. Loss of Wi-Fi signal to the laptop in the observatory? I'll have to check when I get back over there. I came back indoors to check over here. The laptop isn't showing up on my PC Wi-Fi search.There has never been a problem with Wi-Fi before today. I have lifted the antennae on the router.
10.30 Try again. Clumps of soft, white cloud now moving quickly across from the west. Changed to 26mm EPs. Viewing straight through but the seeing isn't as good as last time.
10.43 54/44F Two nice proms on opposite sides of the disk. Several disturbed areas with dark filaments and pores at my 8.00 and 6.00. Lost correct solar orientation with the removal of the diagonal. Gong is showing the "best" prom opposite to my view. Gong shows 2.00 to my 8.00. A binoviewer doesn't alter the view which passes through it. So, it sees the already inverted view of the astronomical refractor. But not reversed Left to Right. Which is confusing because the proms I am seeing, compared to Gong, swap sides as well as doing a vertical flip. Easterly moving clouds were crossing from west to east in my field of view.
I nice branched filament at my 8.00. Two separate filaments at my 6.00 nearer the limb. The 8.00 prom has three trunks and a large, leaning cloud "blowing" towards my north. Quite a large feature compared with any recent examples.
Just for fun I went "up through the gears" of my secondhand Meade 4000 eyepiece collection. In white light the very tiny sunspot hardly grows in size. In moments of steadier seeing it looks slightly oval but nothing more. I managed a still sharp, 220x, with the 10mm + B-SC in the iStar 180/12 R35 + 2" Lacerta prism. Still no real detail to speak of.
11.25 The prom cloud is shrinking rapidly an the trunks reduced to two. The formerly branched filament at 8.00 has all but collapsed by 10.50 CET. A dark pore [spot?] is still nearby. Now another, very long and thin filament has appeared almost at right angles to the original. The original filament is now only a shadow of its former self.
11.40 59/46F After 2.5 hours of tracking the sun the Lacerta heat sink is only at 85F. The dome panels facing the sun are at 95 -90F inside depending on height. Inside panels in direct sunshine from the slit are at similar temperatures. Panel temperatures collapse when the sun is cloud covered. Which is a good indicator of the benefits of shade on the dome if it can be achieved. The sky is now almost completely cloud covered and growing much denser by the minute.
Took a break to pull back the oak trees overhanging the north side of the dome with guy ropes. Then I drilled out the bolt holes to make shutter security much easier. Mixture of cloud, brief sunny periods and rain drops now.
12.20 57/46 Enjoying occasional clearing. The "spot" is still visible in WL but very small. Little to see of the earlier filaments at 8.00 in H-a. A long oval outline has been formed by both filaments.
13.20 52/44 The sky is white. Then grey.
*
No comments:
Post a Comment