LtE in CMO #253

From  Randy TATUM


@. . . . Thank you for sending the CMOs and emailing me the sunspot photographs. I enjoyed seeing your fine photographs! I often use a pentaprism and polarizing filters for white light observing. Have never used a Herschel wedge, but result must be similar.

 

The weather here has been very good recently and there is much in the sky to enjoy. I observed the large flare at Bon Air Solar Observatory (Ragland) on 11-4. It produced a major radio blackout and several faint loops on the disk. This flare produced a lot of energetic particles, but was not a great x-ray flare.  It was perfectly placed to cause a geomagnetic response. On the way home from work on 11-5 (1015 pm) I noticed reddish glows near the zenith and headed to a site about 30 km West of Richmond. I had a wonderful view of the aurora till 1230 am. The colors were red, white, green and blue.

 

  I have seen two other displays and this was by far the best! My photos turned out fine even though the f-stop was wrong. The Leonid meteor shower was well observed here. The humidity was high that night and fog was a problem near Richmond. I observed with a few friends about 50 km west of the city. My friends have 60 acres and a light plane runway on their property. Meteors increased as the night went on and only a few fireballs were seen. One cast a shadow. We observed several hundred meteors and they continued to be seen through twilight and the fog! On a radiant photo I count seven meteors. All in all it was a great show! Hope you had good weather in Japan. 

 

 Best regards to you for the holiday season.

 (25 November 2001 email)


 Randy TATUM (Richmond, VA, USA)

KRTatum@msn.com


 Back to the LtE Home Page

 Jump to the LtE Archives