N17W16 sunspot group fast evolution on 110820 to 110822

Three frames from :
Lockheed Martin Solar Laboratory movie

SDSS project for Colegio de Ciencias y Humanidades Plantel Sur UNAM #1

http://www.cch-sur.unam.mx/
Prof. Fis. Arturo Garcia Cole

Exercise: Obtain finding image of an object in SDSS

For example M104 the Sombrero galaxy:
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/


Obtain coordinates from the Space Telescope Science Institute page:
http://stdatu.stsci.edu/cgi-bin/dss_form


Place the coordinates in the SDSS chart page:
http://skyserver.sdss3.org/dr8/en/tools/chart/chart.asp


Save the image

JD Maddy's beautiful image of Comet Garradd and M15

JD has given me the pleasure of posting his beautiful photograph.

It was taken with his Celestron 11", fork mount (alt-az), Hyperstar and a Canon XSI. It's a stack of 10 images using Deep Sky Stacker and Gimp 2 for processing. He took it from his observatory in Clarkdale Arizona, at about 3am on Aug 4th. SQM readings were 21.1.

Please click image for a 1024 by 668 pixel enlargement

Comet Garradd 2009 P1

Many thanks for the images from:
http://www.aerith.net/comet/catalog/2009P1/2009P1.html
I hope we can image it, starting in September, with the Pueblo High School, Tucson Arizona, and University of Mexico (CCH-Sur UNAM) Tzec Maun Teams.

Orbital Elements

Epoch 2011 Dec. 25.0 TT = JDT 2455920.5
T 2011 Dec. 23.67587 TT                                 MPC
q   1.5505337            (2000.0)            P               Q
z  -0.0006873      Peri.   90.74737     -0.16660816     -0.82691209
 +/-0.0000006      Node   325.99768     -0.58719864     +0.52078381
e   1.0010658      Incl.  106.17747     +0.79211077     +0.21213351
From 1392 observations 2009 Aug. 13-2011 July 29, mean residual 0".4.

Observations and more orbital elements
http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/mpec/K11/K11O57.html

Le Soleil, notre etoile

http://www.arte.tv/fr/Comprendre-le-monde/La-nuit-des-etoiles/4069200.html

click to see the video

Goodbye to Sunspots

Matthew Penn and William Livingston, observing the Zeeman spliting of the 1565 nanometer infrared neutral iron line, report in:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.0784v1

an 11 year decreasing trend in the sunspot magnetic field strength.

They used the NSO Kitt Peak McMath-Pierce telescope.

Extrapolating the trend means virtually no sunspots in cycle 25 (we are at the beginning of cycle 24) !!

Are we headed to another 70 year long Maunder minimum ?

First Earth based detection of a superbolide on Jupiter

A preprint of a paper on the subject was published in arXiv September 9, and may be downloaded at:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.1824

I am very proud that the lead author is affiliated with the University of the Basque Nation, in Bilbao Spain.
My Family comes from the Basque Nation, located in France and Spain.