I enter into each imaging session with a plan of active regions I will capture. Of course I’m flexible and ready to refocus in an instant to any spontaneous activity.On August 28th with clear skies and a calm wind at 67ºF, Humidity 68%, Dew point 56%, barometric pressure of 29.93 & steady the SolarMax 90 telescope <.5Å was tracking the Sun. Most all sessions are at sunrise as the earths atmosphere has had time to cool over night and is most steady. The Sun at an altitude of 10º above the horizon is best for my imaging puzzle.

This mornings session was going quite well as the atmosphere was cooperating and the focus and exposure was looking correct. I was saving the sharp and clear frames and deleting the blurred and distorted ones when all of a sudden at 14:25:37 Z a frame appeared on the monitor and caught my eye. . . a plane, In my astonishment I came much to close to pushing the refresh key and losing the image I’d been looking to capture for so long. I slowly backed my hands away from the key board and carefully saved the image in different formats, after taking a moment to review my capture I continue on and wrapped up the session.

Observing and imaging is very exciting, amazing views of our closest star are found right in your own backyard! SteadySkies, g a r y p a l m e r