ENJOY THE SUN TO ITS MAXIMUM AND EXPERIENCE THE DELIGHTS OF SOLAR ASTRONOMY

Hello and I wish you a warm welcome to Andy Devey's website THE SOLAR EXPLORER. This is a new website that I will continuously evolve as an interactive resource for you aspiring amateur astronomers that are committed to SAFELY achieving your own progressive solar astronomical and outreach goals. Please feel free to contact me either to ask questions or to make any comments about my website - all feedback is helpful! Check out this short video [2 - 1/2 minutes] prepared by the local Barnsley press. HERE IS MY LATEST WORK and here is my best work to date

NEW - Please check out the new 32-minute DVD on Lets Talk Astronomy featuring some of my solar work. Would you be interested in sponsoring me and to help me to further develop my work? Missed that major solar event?

Here is a chronological access to over 105 online TV programs and videos about the Sun dating back to the 1950's and over 80 books about the Sun/Solar Astronomy dating back to the 17th Century! Here is the latest Solar DATA from the science community

Here is an M3-class flare that broke across AR1302 between 15-27 and 15-39UT on the 25 September 2011. The image below shows my full sequence from 15-12 to 15-39UT, you can clearly see a loop fails and this triggers this huge blast and ejection. I have had to shrink the scale of this image to fit it onto this site.

If you would like to appreciate the full resolution of my photos and animated sequences then right click onto them and select "Save image as" this will let you copy the image to a file of your choice. Then open a Powerpoint document [I use the 2007 version] click on the "insert" tab and then select  "picture", this will let you find the photo you just saved from my site and drop the file into Powerpoint. I usually do a default setting of the slide back ground to black and often stretch the image to fill the full slide. Then click on "slide show" and "from beginning" and enjoy. Any problems send me an email! All my photos are named with the date and the universal times showing for the beginning and end of the sequences and hover the cursar over them and it will show you should I have not included it in my descriptive text.

This is the largest solar flare event that I have captured thus far. It is an M6-flare that broke across AR1283 on 8 September 2011 with the sequence running from 15-57 to 16-18UT. The seeing conditions were a average/poor grade 3. A huge plasma loop arcs above the event. This featured on the front page of the NASA spaceweather web site on 9 September 2011

This animation is a time-lapse sequence of Active Region AR1164 photographed on the 7th March 2011 between 15-34UT and 15-58UT here you see just 12 frames looped into an animation that runs at 10 frames per second. By animating your still sequences of a particular object or event this produces a time-lapse image sequence that really does bring your solar imaging to life. These animations help to show just how dynamic the Sun is and what a wonderful astronomical target it can be.

The animation above and the two still photographs are of a large Coronal Mass Ejection [CME] that I was lucky enough to photograph on the 13 April 2010. To give scale perspective to this event the Earth in comparison would be the size of the full stop at the end of this sentence and its height in the still photo is about 240,000 miles and roughly the same distance as the Earth to the Moon. Occasionally the Sun does produce monster eruptions like this and you just need to be there to capture it!

This animation below is one of my higher resolution animations of a C4-class solar flare that broke across Active Region AR1195 on Friday the 22 April 2011 between 12-32UT and 12-42UT. Here you see one minute of real time every 0.15 seconds. This GIF file comprises 10 monochrome stills aligned, animated and then coloured in Photoshop CS5. Solar flares are caused when the contorted magnetic field breaks and reconnects allowing the stored magnetic energy to convert into thermal energy [heat]. The temperature will rise locally from about 10,000 degrees C to about a million degrees and hence the intense brightening. The Sun will produce far larger flares as we head towards solar maximum in about 2013.

Here is my first capture of a Moreton wave a solar shock wave emanating from a M2-class solar flare, they are like the ripples when throwing a stone into a pond. I was using a standard PST to capture this one. Sequence from 10-33 to 11-41UT in seeing grade 1 conditions.

Here is a very dynamic solar prominence animated over a 48 minute period as compared to the two separate limb flares immediately below it.

8 March 2012 here an M4-class limb flare displays lots of post flare loops that flash as they short circuit and reconnect.

The sequence below was taken on 22 September 2011 as a result of an M2-class flare emerging from AR1302 between 08:40 and 09:12UT.

Captured on the 3 December 2011 here is a limb blast that suddenly erupted from the north west limb as the result of a C3-class flare event. This sequence was taken with my old PST on an alt azimuth mount between 11-08 and 11-34UT and as such shows some field rotation. This demonstrates how unpredictable and explosive the Sun can be. It is a wonderful astronomical target and this image is prepared using only the very basic hydrogen-alpha telescope on the market!

Here is a huge prominence showing very dynamic activity. This was prepared on 18 January 2012 between 09-25 and 11-03UT using my standard PST on an alt azimuth mount I then corrected for the field rotation prior to animating in Photoshop CS5. This shows that making great solar cinema is available to even the smaller budgets, so come on - have a go!

18 January 2012 here is the same prominence lifting off between 11-21 and 13-25UT.

24 February 2012 here is a huge solar prominence filmed from 08-17 to 13-17UT in grade 1 seeing conditions from the Lubrin area of southern Spain.

Here are some of the illusive post flare loops, these were still reconnecting 7 hours after a major X1.4 limb flare event. Sequence 28 January 2012 between 09-48 and 10-30UT.

If you have any specific areas that you wish to improve on with your solar astronomy then please contact me through the contacts section at the bottom of my site menu and I shall respond to you directly. I will also draw together any common requests and build these answers/suggestions into some of my future tutorial sections.

Please stay happy and healthy, I wish you clear skies.

Best regards

Andy Devey

NEW please check out this new DVD that you can also watch on line Lets Talk Astronomy - here I do a 25 minute interview and presentation with Dennis Ashton on SAFE solar astronomy and outreach techniques. This 32 minute program features many of my stills and coloured animation sequences together with practical tips on how to make progress - enjoy!