It must be about a year since I last posted here.  Much of that period was consumed by my move from Vancouver, WA to Santa Fe, NM.  We’ve been in our new home for almost 6 months now, and I’m just getting started on building an observatory in the backyard.  Until a few days ago, I hadn’t even set up a telescope here, although I have brought ‘scopes to several public outreach events with the Santa Fe Stargazers (SFS).  But there is an annular solar eclipse coming up in a few weeks, and since I haven’t done any solar imaging in several years, I thought I’d better get in some practice.  The above image thus represents “first light” for my new home.

The eclipse will be on the morning of October 14th, and passes through this area.  We’ll drive south from here to be near the centerline, which passes through Albuquerque.  An annular eclipse happens when the Moon is farther away from Earth than normal, so its angular size is smaller than that of the Sun, so the Sun is never completely covered, as it would be in a total eclipse.

This image was captured using a Lunt LS60THa solar ‘scope (single stack), and an ASI1600MM camera, using SharpCap software.  Frame selection and stacking was done in Autostakkert, and wavelet sharpening in Registax,  Stretching (for the prominences only) was done in Photoshop.

I have been back to the Pacific Northwest since the move.  In mid-August I towed my new trailer all the way to Goldedale, WA, and spent almost 2 weeks visiting old friends during the day, and capturing photons at night:

That’s the same mount, telescope, and camera as last year, and in the very same spot.  Just the trailer and tow vehicle are new.  It turned out to be very hot while I was there.  Fortunately, I have air conditioning in the trailer, and electrical power to run it!

I haven’t yet processed any of the images I captures there, but I hope to soon, and will share the results with you here.