![]() It may be possible to see this with the naked eye with solar eclipse glasses. I was able to see it even in a 4-power finder-scope and it was easy in 10-power binoculars (all properly filtered of course). Image below shows the current sunspot arrangement (May 22) -the largest spot is about 25 000 km across easily twice the diameter of the Earth. Much of the recent auroral activity (sadly under cloudy or smoky skies locally) has been the result of eruptions from some large sunspots and sunspot groups. Image was a Canon 6D 10 s exposure at 50 mm, f/4, ISO 5000. Mars gets to the cluster sooner, however and passes through it June 1&2, while Venus just misses the cluster by a degree or so June 12&13. Venus moves about 1° per night eastward (up to the left in image) while Mars tracks at about half that rate. Image below was taken May 16 and shows the two planets and the cluster stretching diagonally across the frame. The Red Planet will actually slide through M44 at the beginning of June and Venus passes just above M44, missing it by a degree or so, 2 weeks later. They are both in Gemini presently, and due to pass the Beehive Cluster, M44, in Cancer in a few weeks. May 30: Mars and Venus heading for Beehive Clusterīoth Mars and Venus are heading eastward along the ecliptic. It shifts 1.5 minutes of arc per hour, more than enough to notice at medium power in a telescope. In June, Mars will be the brightest object in the cluster and by carefully referencing Mars with a background star you can see Mars moving even in an hour or two of observing. The limiting magnitude in this image is 9th magnitude. Note in the image a number of faint red and blue dots, these are real stars that were recorded by the film and not artifacts. The change in position of Mars over 24 hours is obvious. Mars at the time was magnitude 0.82 and about 7 arc-seconds across. The field of view = 5° and the exposures were 5 minutes long with the camera mounted piggyback on an 8-inch Cave Astrola telescope with a simple clock-drive motor which I may have hand-guided. The images of Mars "inside" the Beehive were taken in 1978 on Apr 29 (right) and Apr 30 (left) with a Yashica SLR on Ektachrome film with ASA 160 using a 135 mm f/3.5 Hanimex lens. I managed to capture Mars near the Beehive fairly early on in my career as an imager and I include two of those images below from 1978. I have always been fascinated with bright planets appearing near the Moon, other planets or bright clusters and regularly attempt images of these. Mars like all the other planets tends to stay close to the ecliptic as it travels around the solar system and every two years or so, passes the Beehive which resides only 1.2° from that ecliptic line. Mars was near Beehive in April, 45 years ago. Images taken with a Nikon Z7II, Nikon 400 mm Z lens at f/7 with a 1.4X teleconverter, iso 640. ![]() Lower image is the diamond ring at end of totality with an interesting lens flare. More images by Herman show the striking vertical prominence seen at totality that was also visible during the diamond ring and deep partial phases. Previously, this had to be done manually by changing the settings during the event and then stacking in processing later. What happens in camera is that several rapid images at different exposure settings are taken and then blended into a single image. This is an “8-stop HDR image” where High Dynamic Range is a camera setting that produces much more detail in over-exposed areas of digital images like the inner corona of solar eclipses. of Arizona) took this image showing the extent of the corona at the Apr 20 solar eclipse. And he was kind enough to grant me permission to use those on this website and in the June issue of my newsletter.Įric M. One such eclipse chaser, a professor of bioscience at the University of Arizona, has posted some spectacular photos. The hybrid solar eclipse of Apr 19/20 was observed by many who made special trips to the region for that purpose.
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