The Big Swirl Prominence 22 Jan 2011
The Big Swirl 22 January 2011
This solar prominence was captured at 1 minute intervals on 22 Jan 2011 from 1847-2157 UT. This prom exhibited a lot of movement, so I let the system run for a 3 hour session. Much of the material that comprised this prom flowed back into the chromosphere. Plasma in this prom showed an increase in speed and variations in brightness as it twisted and grew in height.
I use a Takahashi TSA refractor equipped with double stacked 75mm hydrogen alpha filters made by Lunt Solar of Tucson, Az. I use a Imaging Source DMK 21AU04 CCD (but just purchased a 31AU03) with a Cemax Barlow screwed into a custom low profile nosepiece made by Lumicon, and run it at the fastest frame rate I can. I also have a toolbox of avi editing software to create and edit movies. Vurtualdub is a nice one I use to change frame rates, and its free on the internet. Sometimes I use HandyAvi to capture and/or combine images to create a movie. Advanced Giff Animator is great for creating giff files.
