Plane crossing the Sun

The ESAC Helios Solar observatory captures from time to time objects crossing the Sun disk. In this case, a plane crossed the Sun. The image was taken on Wednesday 26th April 2017 at 10:48:43 Madrid time from the ESAC Helios Solar observatory. Image in H-alpha band (665nm wavelenght) showing the hydrogen emission from the Sun's chromosphere layer. The active regions around two sunspots groups are visible in the image.

Image credit: CESAR Educational team. 

A plane crossing the Sun

A plane flying over the European Space Astronomy center, ESAC, in Madrid, was captured in this h-alpha image of the Sun, on 06-Nov-2013.

The images were acquired with a Coronado SolarMaxII-90 BF30 from the ESAC solar observatory Helios, by Elena Leiva. Real time solar images (weather permitting) are posted in http://www.sciops.esa.int/SB/VENUSEXPRESS/include/sun_monitor.html.

Sun explosion

The Sun delighted us on 06 November 2013 with a magnificent explosion. The material was ejected from a region close to the active sunspot, as shown on this h-alpha sequence of images.

The images were acquired with a Coronado SolarMaxII-90 BF30 from the ESAC solar observatory Helios, by Elena Leiva. Real time solar images (weather permitting) are posted in http://www.sciops.esa.int/SB/VENUSEXPRESS/include/sun_monitor.html.

The Sun in H-alpha during the Venus Transit Day at ESAC

The Venus Transit Day was held at ESAC on the 09 May 2012. One of the activities scheduled for the day was an automated Sun observation from around 10am till 18pm, as a demonstration of the observations to be performed of the actual Venus Transit, on 6 June 2012. Real time images of the Sun were displayed with a video beam projector in the ESAC cafeteria during lunch. The images were posted in a dedicated webpage that will be used for the Venus Transit (http://www.sciops.esa.int/index.php?project=VENUSEXPRESS&page=venus_transit).

A video was created with the images of the day.

The Sun in H-alpha on the 09 May 2012 (one image captured every 30sec).

Part of this video, and other interviews of the Venus Transit Day will be aired in Euronews (http://www.euronews.com/) starting from 24 May.

The equipment was a Messier R102 Optical tube with a Baader solar filter, and a Coronado SolarMaxII 90 BF30, in piggyback, mounted on top of a Meade LXD75/EXOS-2 Goto mount. Images were acquired with a Nikon D3100 and a Canon EOS 500, transfered to ESAC servers for automated processing and storage through dedicated pipelines, and delivered via WebDB to outside viewers.

Telescope mount set-up

The most spectacular images were captured in the H-alpha channel. Here an example of those, a vulture transit, captured in flight around the Aulencia Castle.

Vulture transit in H-alpha

The active Sun Spot group AR1429

The Sun Spot group AR1429 is a very active sun region that has produced recently two major solar flares with coronal mass ejections: the first one was an X1-class on March 5th 04:13UTC, and the second, even more powerful, an X5-class on March 7th at 00:28 UTC.

Several spacecraft have been affected by the heavy radiation and unleashed wave of solar plasma and energetic particles. By example, the Star Tracker units of the probe Venus Express were blinded for 2 days due to the harsh plasma environment in the aftermath of the CME cloud shock wave.

The next images, taken from ESAC on March 10th, 2012, show the Sun in visible and H-alpha, highlighting the AR1429.

AR1429 sunspot group in visible light. Stacked sequence with a Phillips ToUcam webcam, and a Celestron C8" NGT scope with Baader filter.

Visible light. Canon 550D image with a Celestron C8" NGT scope with Baader filter.

H-alpha image. Canon 550D image with a Coronado Solarmax 70. Limb and disk are processed separately and merged into the final image.

The telescope set-up: Coronado Solarmax 70, Celestron Advanced GT mount, Phillips ToUcam webcam.

The Sun with Nikon D3100

The image shows the Sun in H-alpha through Leo's Solarmax 70 telescope, as seen on Friday 17th February. Miguel's Nikon D3100 camera was used for image capture. This is our first attempt to image the Sun with such camera. Antonio Talavera lent the Nikon adapter ring.

Date Shot: 17/02/2012 15:23:43.40
Image Quality: Jpeg Fine (8-bit)
Shutter Speed: 1/25s
ISO Sensitivity: ISO 100

Image was processed with PSP8. Different processing was performed for the limb and disk, and combined via disk masking.

Visible sunspots

The following mosaic was acquired on 14 October 2011 from ESAC with Michel's Celestron newtonian (1m focal, 20cm aperture) and a Baader film filter. Several sunspots groups (1314, 1316, 1317 and 1319) are visible in the image. Another smaller group is seen to the left of group 1319, but it quickly fainted in the following days. We named the group 1319 informally "the Canary Islands", due to the resemblance with the topography of these islands.

This other image was taken in H-alpha with the Solarmax Coronado and shows several dark filaments, along with the sunspots. This image can be compared with images on previous days (check this previous blog entry).

This last animation shows the position of the sunspots and other features in both visible and H-alpha wavelengths.

An active Sun

More H-alpha images of the Sun on 11th October 2011, taken from ESAC with the Solarmax Coronado scope.

An enormous prominence is seen on the top of the Sun limb. The inset shows a magnified image, using a 2x Barlow, with an Earth to scale for comparison. We imaged this feature for ~3h, but the sequence shows little variation of its visible shape. This is a quite stable prominence, at least compared to the highly dynamic prominence after the X1.4-class flare on Sep 22nd .

There are several sunspots visible, and some dark filaments. Other interesting prominences are seen, like a broccoli-shape one on the right of the image.

This big prominence on October 11th seems to have grown from the one observed on October 09th. It was not present anymore on 14th October, as displayed in this animation.

The Sun is keeping a high activity these last weeks.

Sunday Sun

On Sunday 09 October, Leo, Michel and Miguel tried some auto-guiding set up. We took this composite (2 images) of the Sun in H-Alpha,using the Coronado Solarmax.

Sunspot Group no.1302, 22 Sep 2011

Hydrogen Alpha image sequence of the sunspot group 1302 and the prominence associated with the X1.4 class solar flare which peaked around 11:00 UTC on September 22nd, 2011.

The images have been captured from ESAC, with a Coronado Solarmax 70 Telescope.

Time coverage: 11:07 UTC - 14:40 UTC

Rate: 1 frame/minute

Michel, Leo and Miguel, dismounting the telescope after observation.