Solar Imaging

Last weekend I attended the annual Saskatchewan Summer Star Party in Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park.  I HIGHLY recommend this outing for anyone with an interest in astronomy.  I learned more in 3 days - particularly about telescopy and observing - than I've learned in the past year on my own.

I was very fortunate to have access to my dad's 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope on a motorized mount in  addition to my very old (30 years almost!) 4" on equatorial mount.  Big words.  I know.

The best part though is that I was let loose with the motorized Cassegrain during the day last Saturday.  So I took out my nifty iPhone telescope mount, some filters and a big ol' sun and got some great shots!

That''s a SPICY Meatball

So when you start looking at all the stuff out there in that big old space thing, a few things come clear.  As time passes and things break apart, they cool.  So anything of a certain age or certain size has cooled from a ball of lava to say - a rock.  That changes things, because atmospheres disappear and the places become big crater balls.  There are moons around Saturn and Jupiter with active volcanos.  They're still seismically active, just like Earth.

So this got me wondering, will the Earth eventually cool and harden to rock?  When this happens, the giant mass of iron at the center of the planet will stop spinning and the magnetic field that protects us from the worst of the sun will stop.  Freaky stuff.

So tonight I did some looking at it seems that in fact, the Sun will go red giant and vapourize the planet way before that happens.  The earth would take 10,000,000,000 years to solidify, but the sun will destroy the earth in 7,600,000,000 years.  The sun takes it by a hair.  If we don't do it first.

Refreshing.