22.04.2020 Solar H-a: Better seeing conditions.

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Wednesday 22nd. I am writing this the night before because I have just been outside to look at the night sky. It was just after 10pm.
Venus was huge and intensely bright just above the shelter belt in the west. So bright that it was lighting up the otherwise invisible, high altitude clouds. It was like looking at M42 with the embedded stars lighting up the billowing gases. Well, a very similar effect but rather short lived. The cloud must have been thin and moved on.

What really caught my attention, though, was a seemingly endless chain of internet satellites. Which were crossing from roughly southwest and heading towards the east. It was very strange to watch them go over in such a precisely spaced procession.

Truly alien in nature and like nothing I have ever seen before.

They were dim as they rose but became brighter as they passed the meridian. Almost bronze in colour to my eyes. They must have been second or third magnitude as they passed to the south of me. Perhaps 30° high at local maximum? Very odd indeed! Now I know why the professional astronomers are unhappy about them!

10:00 58/57F. Breezy from the east again. Set to capture ore solar videos. I had to screen the slit with netting again to stop the telescopes moving. Results quite detailed. 75 stacked out of 1k frames.

The rest of the morning was spent glaring at uneven brightness,
boiling seeing conditions and wind movement.

I tried to capture some flats but kitchen roll tissue is far too dense. Now I have a white hanky drying on the line for the creases to drop out to try that. The hanky was too thick too.

15.00 68/62. Out/in. In the afternoon I continued to struggle with the seeing conditions. I kept swapping back and forth between blocking filters. Some nice detail was coming out at 15.21 but vignetting spoilt the image unless heavily cropped and resized.

17.45 68/60F. I captured the prom at 11 o'clock NE. A bit 'noisy' and lots of thermal movement! So I only captured 500 frames. 70 stacked.

22.00. Venus.

Left direct. Right through the trees. 150/10 H-a. ASI174MM.

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