The Sun Today 17-03-2026

 

The Solar Photosphere. Seestar S30 with added Baader White light filter.
 Image Credit:Pip Stakkert.

" With a short break in the cloud, Pip was able to use the observatory's little Seestar S30 to capture  'moderate solar activity ' on the Solar Photosphere.

The large sunspot visible '4374' is prominent towards the solar limb at approximately 3 o' clock.

Granulation related to convection movement is visible across the disc with hints of faculae visible. Neither are clearly apparent when using the solar filter that ships with the Seestar as standard kit.

Jolene McSquint Fleming, our instrumentation engineer, created the new solar filter in the JPO's clean room some time ago and we have been awaiting the opportunity to try it.

Jolene has been out of the picture for sometime, after having a minor accident in the Observatory's outreach vehicle. 

Just before the accident, I can clearly remember Kurt saying to her " Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, please don't take the van just because you can". - Joel Cairo CEO of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

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New book in the JPO library and Jupiter Io radio wave interactions.

 

Our imaging and post processing JPO team have been using GraXpert and Siril software for sometime but Joel thought this little booklet was worth an investment of £12 as a reference. On cursory inspection, this appears to be a 'solid' purchase.

Tonight, I reprogrammed the usb dongle feeding the signal from the LVST yagi aerial into the soundcard of the laptop running Spectrum Lab. 

For the next 24 hours, Spectrum Lab will be analysing radio signals centred on 20,100 khz. This will hopefully enable us to capture radio waves generated by interactions between the planet Jupiter and its innermost Galilean Moon Io.

Jupiter is currently riding high in the Northern Hemisphere and in the constellation Gemini." - Kurt Thrust current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Narrow band imaging.

"Jolene Mc Squint-Fleming, our talented engineer at the JPO, was ecstatic this morning, when Royal Mail delivered three narrowband filters - Hydrogen alpha, Sulphur-ll and Oxygen-lll.

She is now 'beavering away in the clean room', with the  JPO 3d printer working overtime, to create filter holders to work with the range of telescopes and cameras we operate.

This recent acquisition will add another dimension to to the astrophotography to be undertaken in 2026 at the Jodrell Plank Observatory".  - Kurt Thrust current Director at the JPO - 'The UK's most easterly Astronomical Observatory.

Cygnus August 2025 - Sh 2-108 (Sharpless 2-108)

 

Sadr Gamma Cygni and associated HII regions and dark dust clouds. Ha luminosity and modified RGB SHO narrowband rendering. Seestar S30 August 2025. Image Credit all versions: Kurt Thrust. Image captured from the JPO, Lowestoft, Suffolk.

"Sadr (Gamma Cygni) is a bright, yellow-white supergiant star at the center of the Cygnus constellation's "Northern Cross" asterism, marking the swan's chest, and is surrounded by the extensive Sadr Region (IC 1318) of glowing nebulae and dust, though the star and nebula are at different distances, with the nebula much farther away. It's a prominent summer night sky target, easily visible to the naked eye, and part of a rich star-forming area in the Milky Way. 

Key Characteristics:

Location: Center of the Northern Cross in Cygnus.

Appearance: A bright, yellow-white supergiant, second only to Deneb in Cygnus's brightness.

Name Meaning: "Sadr" means "chest" in Arabic, referring to its position in the swan.

Distance: About 1,800 light-years from Earth.

Surrounding Nebula: The Gamma Cygni Nebula (IC 1318) appears to surround it but is much further away (around 4,900 light-years). The images from the Hubble Space Telescope are rendered using a modified RGB-SHO palette where Sulphur II emissions are allocated to the red channel, Hydrogen alpha to the green and Oxygen III to blue". - Joel Cairo CEO of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

 

"Seasons Greetings to all stargazers and friends of this blog around the world! May the team at the JPO, the Uk's most easterly observatory, wish you and your families a very merry Christmas and an extremely happy New Year.

The above image, created by Lulu Thrust, features a very rare photograph of our current Director Kurt. It should be said that this photo was captured many years ago using a 'very soft filter'.

All the team at the JPO are looking forward to capturing and sharing with you, in 2026, more wonders of the cosmos." - Joel Cairo CEO of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Star in the East

 

Aldebaran, the Hyades and Pleiades. Image Credit: Kurt Thrust.
Canon 600d DSLR with Canon EOS F1.4 f=50mm lens
all on Star Adventurer EQ mount.

" Kurt was very unlucky not to capture any Geminid meteors as he was running two cameras on the night of the shower maximum. He did however capture this interesting region of the constellation Taurus. The whole team at the JPO, the UK's most easterly observatory, is now powering down for a 'chilled' Christmas break." - Joel Cairo CEO of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

The Andromeda Galaxy Group.

 

The Andromeda Galaxy Group
Seestar S30 with infra red filter. 2.5 hours of 1 minute subs.
captured at the Jodrell Plank Observatory
November 23rd 2025
Image Credit: Kurt Thrust

  

" The Andromeda Group, which includes M31, M32 and M110 (all visible in the above image) are very well imaged by astro-imagers and a bit like the Moon easy to overlook. Indeed, you will find a number of our images of the Andromeda Galaxy on the JPO blog.

Whilst we were under the stars the other night, Kurt remembered that we hadn't used the Seestar S30 to capture data from this group of galaxies. It was also a very good time to image the group with the constellations Andromeda and Pegasus riding high in our southern sky. In all we captured 150 x 60 second subs, which were stacked by the Seestar's on board firmware. Pip Stakkert has spent much of the day processing this stack using Affinity Photo, GraXpert, StarnetGUI and ImagePlus6.5.

We were all a bit amazed at how well the Seestar S30 performed on this target" - Joel Cairo CEO of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

"The Andromeda Galaxy Group—dominated by the spiral giant M31 and its two bright satellite galaxies, M32 and M110—offers a vivid look into the dynamics of galactic evolution within our Local Group. M31, located about 2.5 million light-years away, is the nearest major spiral galaxy to the Milky Way and is on a slow, gravitationally driven collision course with us. Its tightly wound arms, rich with star-forming regions and dust lanes, contrast with the compact, smooth profile of M32, a dwarf elliptical galaxy shaped by tidal interactions with its parent. On the opposite side lies M110, a larger dwarf elliptical whose diffuse structure and signs of past star formation hint at a more complex history. Together, these three galaxies capture a snapshot of the hierarchical processes—accretion, tidal shaping, and galactic interaction—that define the cosmic evolution of galaxy groups across the universe". - Karl Segin outreach officer at the JPO.

" Kurt asked me to investigate the use of the VeraLux_Hypermetric_Stretch script in SIRIL software. I decided to try it out on the Seestar S30 data for the Andromeda Group. I was surprised how quickly this script lifted the finer details in M31's structure. The following two images combine the SIRIL stretched data with the data stretched manually by Kurt. I think this may offer some benefits when processing future data" - Pip Stakkert engineer at the JPO.

Galaxy Group without stars. Credit: Pip Stakkert

Galaxy Group with stars. Credit: Pip Stakkert