| Cat & Mouse! |
SolarMax 70 <.5Å
| | gary palmer | October 17, 2005 |
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| SolarMax 70 <.5Å |
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| Los Angeles is famous for many things one of which is an abundance of sunshine but with a recent deluge of rain it has nearly forced solar imaging into extinction. However, on the morning of February 20th clouds were beginning to breakup and patches of Sunlight were illuminating the landscape. In a move more often than not proves to be an exercise in shaving seconds from my setup routine my SolarMax70 <.5Å is now tracking the Sun.I’m not surprised as my eye meets the eyepiece and the clouds swell closing the gaps where sunlight once flowed through thus officially beginning the game of cat and mouse. |
| I retreat inside to refresh my coffee and reply to couple of post in Solar Chat. While inside I make my first move of the game by pretending that I’m done trying to image the sun for today. All the while I keep repeating to myself in a monotonous tone. . I’mmmm done, I’mmmm done, as I continue this mantra patches of sunlight slowly begin to return. My second move is to not notice that the Sun is returning as I casually walk back to my scope not letting my guard down {not even for a second} and continue to remind myself that I’ve returned outside to begin breaking down my setup but this time I quickly turn and my eye dives into the eyepiece catching a glimpse of the Sun as my heart skips a beat. . . |
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| Into the 90º diagonal goes the Canon G2 and the capturing begins. Normally I would capture the disk first but the fast approaching clouds cause me to switch and go for the prominence instead. I’m lucky because after capturing some 20 frames of the prom the clouds closed in and imaging now defaults into pause mode. Now I’m committed to capturing the disk to complete my image but to accomplish this patience is my only option. |
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| I’m sure you have all experienced the clouds winning in this all too familiar stand off. But this time against all odds luck would be on my side and within minutes the clouds parted. Noticing that the CME prominence was almost gone I quickly pressed on and in-between passing clouds I manage to capture a few sharp frames of the disk. Now the clouds are behaving like magnets attaching themselves to one another and the patchy blue sky disappears for the remainder of the day. So as I wrap up and concluding today's game of cat & mouse I feel a bit guilty as it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature even if it’s only a friendly game of Cat & Mouse. |
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| The journey from Cat & Mouse to a Spotlight print: February 20th 2k5 was the date of this “Cat & Mouse” capture. From the gravitational forces produced by spaceweather.com the SolarMax 70<.5Å image archive Feb,21st http://www.spaceweather.com was then slingshot through space for 432 hours until briefly touching down on March 11th @ space.com there it spent 72 hours imbedding itself into the archives. Now 143 days later it's August 1st as it glides into a steady orbit around Sky & Telescopes Readers Gallery pg. 120. It's August 25th and what once was called “Cat & Mouse” is now referred to as "Solar Eruption" and can be found in Sky & Telescope's Spotlight Series Prints in shop @ sky. SteadySkies, g a r y p a l m e r |
| Classifications: Solar| 10/17/2005 - 0/0/0 |
