The Plough asterism from Alcor to Dubhe

 

Part of the Plough Asterism.
A two pane composite image captured with a tripod mounted
 un-modded Canon 600d DSLR and A Canon F1.4 f=50mm lens.
Image Credit: Kurt Thrust.

" The weather has been difficult for sometime here on the East Coast. We did not get to see the spectacular displays of the Aurora visible almost everywhere in the UK because of low fog and high level cloud. We did manage to image the huge sunspot group on the Sun's Disc which has been instrumental in the creation of the solar mass ejections and the spectacular auroral displays in the Earths atmosphere. We also managed to image the crescent Moon and the above asterism all through 'hazy' skies."  - Kurt Thrust current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Image credit: Astrometry. net.

The Sun's Disc with huge sunspot group May 2024. 66mm Altair Lightwave doublet refractor with white light filter and QHY5-111462c camera. Image credit: Kurt Thrust

The Crescent Moon with earthshine over fields in Suffolk. Canon 600d DSLR with Canon F1.4 f=50mm lens. Image credit: Pip Stakkert

"Friends of the Jodrell Plank Observatory in Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire very kindly sent us the following images of the Aurora taken with their smartphones" - Joel Cairo CEO of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Giant Sunspot Group

Solar Cycle 25 - Sunspot Group - Captured 08 June 2021. Altair Astro 66mm Refractor on Star Adventurer Equatorial Mount. QHY5-11 mono camera. Stack of two SER videos. Credit: Pip Stakkert.

"Pip recently processed data captured earlier in the month and has managed to bring out some of the detail in this giant group of sunspots pictured close to the solar limb. The image shows some surface granulation of the photosphere and the darkening of the solar disk towards the limb. To give some idea of scale, the big sunspot group near the top of the enlarged view below, is roughly the size of the Earth!" - Kurt Thrust current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

" The enlarged view of the sunspots provides hints of the churning convection cells that make up the photosphere which is visible in white light. The Sun's photosphere is composed of convection cells named granules, which are rising columns of superheated (5,800 °C) plasma. Each cell is about 1,000 km in diameter.  You can observe the the same granulation in the surface of  boiling liquids on Earth but on a much reduced scale. The solar plasma cools as it rises and then descends in the narrow spaces between the granules. This rise and fall  is repeated over and over again" - Joel Cairo CEO of the Jodrell Plank Observatory..