Solar Viewing at Perton 20th June 2019

By Doug Bickley

Solar Observing at Perton Library
Solar Observing at Perton Library

Perton Astronomy Group which is affiliated to WolvAS meet on the third Thursday of every month. The June meeting saw ten people, mostly Wolvas members meeting at 7pm.

The sun was out, great, because we had a whole range of equipment looking at the Sun on a lovely balmy evening. I had taken the Society PST but no webcam, but I managed a couple of dodgy afocal shots off my phone. The PST is a bit tricky to get right, and the etalon filter adjustment is sensitive, but we did see some granulation (but no flares).

Read more

Arietids Backscatter Data

By Trevor Clifton

A daytime meteor shower occurs on the morning of the 7th June. Known as the Daytime Arietids, this shower is linked to the sun grazing comet 96P/Machholz. Detectable only by radar backscatter, the Arietids produces a level of activity comparable to that of the Perseids.

The activity graph is produced below and is obtained via my automated system. The missing bar at around 7 am is due to a high level of interference which causes my system to reject that 10 minutes block of data.

Arietids backscatter detections
Arietids backscatter detections 7th June 2019

Read more