Needs Cleaning!

This is a view down the front end of my telescope. As you can see it is starting to gather dust on the front lens and needs a (careful) clean! For those of you interested in the technical details it is a 127 Maksutov Cassegrain with a focal length of 1500mm. What this means is that the main reflector mirror which gathers the incoming light is 127mm in diameter, a combination of lenses and mirrors divert the light to the focal point where an eyepiece magnifies the image, or, a camera captures the video or single images. I use this for my close-up shots of the Moon and Sun, as well as pictures of the brighter planets especially Jupiter and Saturn. Most of my Moon and Sun shots are taken with my Fuji bridge camera.

Rain all day today so no chance for any of my now usual stuff! However I can update you on some Solar activity; a glancing blow from a CME (charged particles shot out from flares in the main) caused some faint auroral activity in the early hours of the morning, but this was at high latitudes and only really visible on long exposure photographs. Yesterday's flare from AR1748 was ejected from the Sun at over 3 million mph! Yes, that's not a typo! Depending on intensity CME's take anything from about 12 to 40 hours to reach the Earth. Lancaster Uni runs AuroraWatch Uk and you can get updates via Twitter etc.. AR1748's flare has a 75% chance of creating a polar geomagnetic storm.