Welcome to 2017, Year of the Solar Eclipse


Ignoring politics (which seems like a wise thing to do), the biggest news item for 2017 just might be the total solar eclipse that will be visible across almost all of the U.S. on August 21st of this year.  I plan to write fairly often about all things solar this year, and post at least a few solar images – especially after the new solar telescope arrives in a few months.

I had hoped to get at least one new image captured before the end of 2016, but it didn’t happen.  We had one clear night recently, but I was too busy with the holidays to get out to the observatory.  A recent post on NASA’a APOD (https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap161224.html) reminded me that I started working on the same target almost 2 years ago and never finished it.  Here is the single channel (hydrogen-alpha) I got then:

ConeNeb

Looking at the version on APOD suggests that adding some color would improve this image significantly, so this is my next target.  Fortunately, things generally change very slowly in deep space, so I can photograph the same area 2 years later with different filters and expect it to match the older image.

2016 was a great year for Wa-chur-ed Observatory.  Since I started offering the service of creating backlit prints from customer images it has become nearly one third of my revenue, even though it has, so far, been almost entirely used by other astro-photographers.  This helped to fuel a growth in sales of more than 80% over 2015, so I want to give a big “Thank You!” to all my customers and followers.

Happy New Year,

Greg


About Greg Marshall

I am a retired electronics engineer and after a few months of enjoying my leisure I began to miss doing product development. My astronomy hobby always needed new solutions to unique problems, so I decided that whenever I came up with a good solution I would try to make it available to others.

Leave a comment