With overcast skies, overnight temperatures of about 9°F, and five-plus inches of snowfall over the past 48 hours, we’re pretty much buttoned down. Of course, changeable as weather is, they’re forecasting sunshine tomorrow, and 47° with rain by Thursday! Yeah, you saw “sunshine” mentioned but we have a healthy level of doubt where clear skies lately are concerned. In the meantime, there is snow to shovel and birds to watch… Oh! That’s a red-bellied nuthatch!
Here are some views of the sunspot
that blew off the CMEs
that caused the geomagnetic storms
that made the auroras
that raised all the hubbub this week.
The sunspot at Active Region 4274 is responsible for all the action. Where we show two sunspots, the smaller one (bottom edge) is AR4275. The first view is in hydrogen-alpha light, the second and third views are in white light; yellow-orange tones are false color applied in processing.
The first snow of the season arrived overnight producing, for the observatory, a beautiful daytime scene. Ground heat cleared the pavers around the structure but continued cold weather will change that — we’ll likely have to start shoveling soon. Several days of snow chances lie ahead with clear skies are expected during the day on Thursday, November 13.
October 21, 2025 — It was a tough one to find but, after a good deal of effort under near-pristine (for us) skies, I was able to spot the comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) from a Medina County, Ohio park. This (above) is a quick edit of a single frame. Star tracking wasn’t what it should have been; I’ve got to get more practice in the field! I worked on combining multiple frames the next morning, attempting to create a better quality image.
Stacking RAW images of C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) I did what I could to pull the most out of the imagery. What we got was a somewhat “cleaner” version. Not spectacular but the best we could do given all circumstances. I hope to learn improved processing skills and revisit the source images in the future. In the meantime, though the pictures are not spectacular, I’m happy to have bagged another comet. After all, how many of them do most of us see in a lifetime? These were recorded the night of October 20 but the UTC time conversion moves the date to the 21st.
November 3, 2025 — The air was still and the moon so bright and clear tonight, we had to open up the observatory long enough to take a peek and a pic! Moon was 92% illuminated in its waxing gibbous phase, lighting the landscape around us, no flashlight required. Technical: Askar 103 APO telescope, TeleVue Powermate 2X Barlow, Canon EOS 5D Mk. 4 DSLR, single exposure.
October 20, 2025 — So how well does the Meade LXD75 6-inch achromat fit under the dome? Actually, pretty well! Shooting the sun this afternoon was (outside of seeing conditions) not bad. The scope is about four feet in length, not counting imaging and observing add-ons, and the objective end swings well inside the dome. Access to the eyepiece and camera was good. Not much room to get past the visual end, however, so we’ll see! Main thing is, it fits. Pretty much.
October 3, 2025 — We had been having quit a lot of trouble lately, recording data and reproducing images of Sun with prominences. There was some early success but even those images were a struggle to produce. Taking a look at suggested camera settings found in an article on solar imaging, one thing stood out — gain! We had nudged the camera’s gain setting upward and that’s not helpful and certainly not recommended; the setting should be very low or even zero! A few adjustments in data capture parameters was all it took to make a big difference in image processing and results!
We’re very pleased with Barlow-boosted views, shown here, though we’re still having some issues with achieving even lighting across whole-disk views — just can’t seem to get them tuned right with the Coronado SolarMax III. Visual observing was also very good, especially with the TeleVue 10mm eyepiece. October 3 conditions: Clear sky, temperature of 74°F, light southeast wind.
Note: The observatory construction is essentially complete with only a few “touch up” items and further outfitting remaining. We’ll eventually get around to writing and illustrating the story of the project. First, though, the 2025 International Observe the Moon Night….
October 4 marked International Observe the Moon Night (IOMN), an event billed as an opportunity to “unite people across the globe in a celebration of lunar observation, science, and exploration.” Coordinated and promoted by NASA, IOMN boasted 1,045 registered events worldwide. That count does not include informal events and individuals who, on their own, observed Earth’s Moon, encouraged by the promotion. Unfortunately, due to a U.S. government shutdown, NASA staff are unable to update the IOMN website and we may never know how it went this year.
While we did not host an outreach event, we did post fresh, new telescopic images depicting lunar details, along with descriptions of those events as our participation. This year, we concentrated our efforts on the Threads social media platform. What follows is what we posted.
Crater Plato is about 63 miles in diameter and about 3.84 billion years old. Once again, see how the western rims of the craters along the terminator shine in the low-angle light from the rising Sun.
We hope you have enjoyed what you have seen and will see online tonight, or were fortunate to attend an International Observe the Moon Night event in person. Outdoors, at home, online, or wherever you may be, we’re glad to have had you with us. We hope IOMN has united people across the globe in a celebration of lunar observation, science, and exploration, under one sky, appreciating one Moon. Goodnight, and keep looking up!
The big Saia freight truck pulled up in front in the early afternoon July 10. The ready-to-assemble (RTA) observatory had arrived on two pallets weighing about 625 pounds each. After struggles getting it off the truck, aided by its very helpful driver, and with unexpected help from a neighbor, we stowed the base wall components in the garage. I moved the dome halves myself to a patio space adjacent to the observatory site where they are to be assembled.
Withering hot weather and a severe summer cold (ironic?) halted progress on the observatory dome assembly for several days. This afternoon, July 14, hoping to dive into the work tomorrow morning, I set up a canopy for sun protection. The portable shade along with a good electric fan ought to help extend the day’s work time until I can’t stand the heat!
At long last, here we go!
It has been a long, and bumpy road but, at long last, our SkyShed POD-S observatory structure is arriving! Delivery is set for tomorrow, July 10, via freight truck. Wrangling the large and heavy parts of the RTA (ready-to-assemble) building from street to site will be challenging but I think / I hope I can manage it. One looming problem: once put together, hoisting the assembled dome to rest upon the round base wall is a task that I’m uncertain how we’ll accomplish — the thing will weigh 350 pounds! I’ll need several strong people to help lift the dome but don’t know where they’ll come from.
In the mean time, I’ve assembled a collection of tools and materials required for the assembly, the building permit is in place, and so we forge ahead.
Stella-Luna Observatory 