Very spotty sunspots

The Sun with yellow filter.

It looks like we have have finally hit the sunspot maximum! These images were taken yesterday April 18th 2014. The poor thing looks like it has the measles!
Some nice images taken with my Skywatcher 80ED Pro, Baader solar safe filter and coloured filters. A lot of activity on the Sun at the moment, the Aurora has reached K6 tonight.

Sunspots today with the blue filter.

Sunspots today showing the boiling surface of the chromosphere.

 

Sunspots today in natural white light.

ISS photo sequence

This is a series of frames captured using my Skywatcher 130 and Philips Toucam Pro II webcam on April 15th. I have tried various ways of capturing close up images of the ISS with a video and stills, but it is so difficult to get right. I think it all comes down to luck at the end of the day with the equipment that I am using.

Got a lot of retweets on Twitter with this image!

Swedish Star Party

This week we have had our Swedish friends Birgitta, Kribban and Malva visiting us. After tea, I took my Skywatcher 130m telescope out into the garden to look at the Moon and Jupiter. sky was perfectly clear. It was fun to try to take photos with our smartphones.

Malva and Birgitta's smartphone photo of the Moon through my telescope.

 

 Malva and Birgitta's photo of Jupiter and it's moons with the Smartphone.
 

Later, we watched the International Space Station pass overhead...beautiful!