solar activity

By the way, I took the Ranger/SM40 out for a spin "on"
the Sun Tuesday morning, and was pleasantly surprised
to find a rather sizable (~1 Jovian diameter) prominence
on the following limb, in the northern hemisphere. A bit
difficult to describe in text, but it was thin the whole way,
shooting straight up and then curving in a gentle arc
down toward the equator.

Probably not there anymore, but maybe other activity
associated with the same area is.

--
Brian Tung (posting from Google Groups)
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What is a Ranger/SM40? A solar telescope? Who makes it?
Brian Tung wrote:
By the way, I took the Ranger/SM40 out for a spin "on"
the Sun Tuesday morning, and was pleasantly surprised
to find a rather sizable (~1 Jovian diameter) prominence
on the following limb, in the northern hemisphere. A bit
difficult to describe in text, but it was thin the whole way,
shooting straight up and then curving in a gentle arc
down toward the equator.

Probably not there anymore, but maybe other activity
associated with the same area is.

--
Brian Tung (posting from Google Groups)
The Astronomy Corner at http://www.astronomycorner.net/
Unofficial C5+ Page at http://www.astronomycorner.net/c5plus/
My PleiadAtlas Page at http://www.astronomycorner.net/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ at http://www.astronomycorner.net/reference/faq.html

Wayne Watson wrote:
What is a Ranger/SM40? A solar telescope? Who makes it?

The Ranger is Tele Vue's old 70 mm refractor, no
longer made. I bought it used in about 2000. The
SM40 refers to Coronado's SolarMax 40, a 40 mm
H-alpha filter with a 0.7 nm bandwidth.

The observations used a 15 mm Plossl. At the
Ranger's 480 mm focal length, that's nominally a
magnification of 32x.

Occasionally you may see me refer to the Ranger
as "the Wocket." Not often, but it does happen.

--
Brian Tung (posting from Google Groups)
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The Ranger is Tele Vue's old 70 mm refractor, no
longer made. I bought it used in about 2000. The
SM40 refers to Coronado's SolarMax 40, a 40 mm
H-alpha filter with a 0.7 nm bandwidth.

"SolarMax 40" also referred to the complete 40 mm scope w/filters. I have
one. Coronado's nomenclature could be confusing.
--
Curtis Croulet
Temecula, California

Curtis Croulet wrote:
"SolarMax 40" also referred to the complete 40 mm scope w/filters. *I have
one. *Coronado's nomenclature could be confusing.

Yes, interesting. Back in 2004, I posted a few times about
the filter, which at the time was the only product known as
the SolarMax. The dedicated scopes were instead called
MaxScopes. This was all pre-Meade, though; I have a PDF
of a instruction booklet that was printed post-Meade, and
it refers to all of the products as SolarMax. My old posts
from before the acquisition refer to SM and MS as the filter
and scope, respectively.

By the way, the bandpass of the filter is 0.07 nm, not 0.7
nm. The latter would have been a 7 angstrom bandpass
and would be pretty useless for disc detail. I guess I've
been annoyed a few too many times by people referring
to Derek Fisher's last-second shot as the "point-oh-four,"
rather than the "oh-point-four."

--
Brian Tung (posting from Google Groups)
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The chance to "SolarMax" was before the Meade purchase of Coronado, though
maybe not before backroom negotiations. That is, I'm not claiming that
Meade didn't have some influence on this. My understanding was that there
was a trademark infringement issue with "MaxScope," and Coronado had to
change it.
--
Curtis Croulet
Temecula, California

Curtis Croulet wrote:
The chance to "SolarMax" was before the Meade purchase of Coronado, though
maybe not before backroom negotiations. That is, I'm not claiming that
Meade didn't have some influence on this. My understanding was that there
was a trademark infringement issue with "MaxScope," and Coronado had to
change it.

That may be. After about 2004, I stopped worrying about what the
various products were called.

Anyway, as it happens, I took another look at the Sun on Friday and
sadly, it was not as active as it had been. There was still some
activity high in the northern hemisphere, with a fairly faint but
tallish prominence (maybe 5 Earth diameters) the most obvious sign of
activity.

--
Brian Tung
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