It’s kind of fun to check sunspots from day to day. This is my drawing from today:



I have to figure out how to get a grid in the eyepiece, if that’s a thing. It would make drawing much more accurate. Right now, I kind of have to estimate where on a radial a sunspot is to draw it, then further estimate where the radials are for the other sunspots. Comparing yesterday’s drawing to today’s, I’m fairly close. But, I’d like to be able to get it closer.

Yesterday, I made a shade from a large piece of cardboard, to shield the telescope from warming in the sunlight, but also to give the viewer (me) some shade from the sun while I approach the eyepiece. It works pretty well!



I was thinking I’d paint it white, just to reflect as much sunlight from it as it can. No need to heat the solar filter, even a little bit. the solar filter is marginally larger than the outside diameter of my telescope. So, while tracking the sun, the telescope proper is shaded by the body of the solar filter. But, the finder scope (which I can’t use to align to the sun anyway) was still in direct sunlight, even though I put the lens cap on. The cardboard shades the finder scope, too. It prevents me from having to remove it for daytime viewing and re-align the finder scope for night time viewing.

Actually putting the sun in the eyepiece is a bit of a trick. The solar filter shows a black view until the sun is directly in the eyepiece. I’m getting pretty good at using the shadow cast by the telescope to judge if I’m pointing at the sun. I move the scope until the shadow is as small as I can get it. Today, I was right on.

High clouds moved in tonight, thick enough to nearly block out Sirius. But, we managed to bag Jupiter again. Then, we swung over to Ursa Major, which in no way looks like a bear. I know it as the Big Dipper. It turns out the middle start of the handle isn’t a single star at all, but a binary system. The brighter star is Mizar, the dimmer of the pair is Alcor.

This is the sort of work my telescope is made to do. It was perfectly easy to split the pair, even at magnification of 67x.

Then the clouds reached the Big Dipper. A short evening at the eyepiece.

You may see some auroras this year and next in upstate New York. We've had a number of them lately, but I still haven't ever seen one for myself. Hopefully I'll catch one soon!

I’ve been getting use out of the solar filter I got for my telescope. Here are a couple of sunspot sketches I made over the last two days:





Their rotation is different because I observed them at different times of day, rotating the eyepiece to a comfortable viewing angle.

Yesterday’s sketch.



I figured out how to determine cardinal points. Switch off the telescope mount drive. The direction of drift in the eyepiece is west. Since I use a star diagonal (so I don’t have to look straight into the bottom of the telescope), my image orientation is vertically correct, but mirror image (flipped left to right). So, north is ninety degrees counterclockwise clockwise from west.

It’s nice to know directions to track those sunspot groups from day to day.

Wonderfully clear skies last night, today, and forecast through tomorrow. Today’s sketch:



Primus and I were up at 03:00 to catch the Lyrid meteor shower before dawn. It was really cold, 23 F (-5 C), but we dressed accordingly and were comfortable. Lyrids? Ha. We didn’t see a single one. Plenty of satellites, though. We’ll try again tonight, but I don’t expect much.

Another beautiful day in New York. I mean, Kansas.



Last night, Primus and I were out for an hour, looking for Lyrids. No Lyrids. But, Primus did see a random shooting star, so the evening was a success. We were out before the moon rose, so we had really nice seeing, great dark sky.

Only one of those major sunspot groups still faces us. I expected there to be groups better distributed around the sun.

Here are today’s sunspots:

Another eclipse?