A meteor shower that makes the night sky lively around August 12th every year.
I would like to report on my attempt to observe in the night sky of Nairobi.
A photo of the sun, even though it is a Perseids meteor shower.
It wasn't sunny at all.
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August 12 is the maximum day of the Perseids meteor shower.
It was the day when the most meteors were supposed to be seen, but for three days after the maximum day, the sky of Nairobi was covered with thick clouds throughout the night.
While I was sleeping, I set up a time-lapse movie in the sky, but the clouds were thick throughout the night, and there was no moment when it cleared up.
As a result, I couldn't see a single meteor for three days after the maximum day of the Perseids meteor shower.
A few days before the maximum day, I was disappointed that many meteors from the Perseids meteor shower were seen and the lunar conditions were not bad.
I think there are a lot of clouds these days
There are a lot of clouds here, the increase of cosmic rays due to the weakening of the solar activity and the increase of clouds due to it, I think that it is not a lie.
This time, I was planning to post a picture of a meteor in this blog, but I couldn't take it completely, so I decided to focus on the source of energy, the mother sun.
Almost all of the energy that falls on the earth comes from the sun.
With regard to oil and natural gas, the energy that creatures that were active on the earth have been active and accumulated based on solar energy long ago.
Except for nuclear and nuclear energy, it is no exaggeration to say that all the energy used by humankind is due to solar activity.
Therefore, the cause of the cloudiness this time is also the influence of the sun! ?? It can be said that.
Is it impossible?
The energy that the earth receives from the sun is only an hour, which is equivalent to the energy consumed by humankind in the last half century.
It seems that the activities of humankind on the earth are known.
Last year, I stayed in Kericho, western Kenya for a year.
From May to the end of the year when I left Kericho, it was covered with thick clouds almost every day, and there were almost no days, and it continued to rain every day. A lot of it.
Even in the rainy regions, locals say that has never happened before.
In this TV news program, I don't know how long it will take, but it says that the amount of precipitation is four times that of the average year.
Perhaps because of this rainfall, the water levels of many lakes in Kenya have risen considerably.
Nacle National Park, old gate (2019)
And it is said that such weather continues not only in Kericho but throughout Kenya this year as well.
If something like the Maunder Minimum happens, it's, of course, 400 years ago that no one has ever experienced it.
No one was alive at that time.
Sunspot
From 2019, the sun hasn't had any sunspots for a while.
In a previous blog, I introduced that sunspots appeared for the first time in a while.
This change in sunspot activity seems to have a significant impact on the global environment.
It is a fact that has been known from experience for a long time that the earth becomes cold when the sunspot disappears.
If black spots do not appear, it seems that the global environment will be in various ways.
The Maunder Minimum, which was 400 years ago, was a period of 70 years when there were almost no sunspots.
During that time, Japan suffered a lot of cold weather and famine.
Globally, the Thames River in London has frozen, and the river is filled with thick ice, with stalls lined up on the ice.
It is said that a state in which solar activity is extremely weakened for a long period of time, such as the Maunder Minimum, and a state in which almost no sunspots appear, occur in a cycle of about 400 years.
According to the data of thick ice piled up in Antarctica, it has happened many times before that.
And it is said that the solar cycle will be extended to 13 years from the usual 11 years before the Maunder Minimum, the period when no sunspots appear for a long time.
And the current situation.
The 24th phase of the solar cycle began in 2008, and 12 years later, the 25th phase has not yet begun.
Furthermore, in addition to the sluggish activity in the 24th term for the first time in 90 years, 400 years have passed since the Maunder Minimum.
(Later, when I investigated it properly, it was said that the 24th term ended in December 2019 and the 25th term started, but it seems that the activity is still very sluggish as of November 2020.)
I feel a little scared because it matches too much.
A second sunspot group came out when the sunspots that appeared after a long time turned to the back and disappeared.
It seems that other very small sunspots have been generated and recorded.
(As always, we are giving information based on the manager's own observations. For details, please refer to the information on the observatory, etc.)
However, the solar activity is not active, and only small sunspots are occurring.
Sunspot on August 10
Two small sunspots to the right of the middle of the Northern Hemisphere
The upper sunspot is a new sunspot when the previous sunspot disappeared behind the sun.
Compared to the whole sun, it looks like dots and its size is very small.
It's very small and difficult to understand, so I've posted an enlarged version below.
Two small sunspots are lined up
Very small sunspots from the whole sun.
Even if it looks small, if you compare its size with the earth, you can see that it has a certain size.
It looks bigger than the African Continent.
Benefits of the Earth's magnetic field
The fact that there are few sunspots and the sun is calm means that the solar magnetic field is weak and the solar wind ejected into space is also calm.
When solar activity becomes active, strong solar flares also occur frequently.
When such a strong solar flare hits the earth directly, it causes communication failure (Dellinger phenomenon) and damages electronic devices.
While the current solar activity is weakening, it seems that there is not much worry about it.
Even if it is a direct hit, thanks to the magnetic field on the earth, it is not necessary to be hit directly by the charged solar wind.
The electrified particles of the solar wind that flew toward the earth are largely detoured by the earth's magnetic barrier and come to the earth with weakened energy.
The solar wind, which follows the magnetic field lines of the earth's magnetic field and detours, appears as an aurora around the North Pole and the South Pole.
Earth magnetic field that is not safe
The magnetic field of the earth, which protects the earth from the solar wind, does not seem to be safe all the time.
As we all know, the earth is a big magnet.
The north pole is the south pole and the south pole is the north pole, and if you use a compass, the north pole points to the north and you can know the direction.
However, the earth is not a permanent magnet, but a large electromagnet. (There are various theories)
The source of the magnetic force is under the crust, and iron that melts at high temperature and high pressure convects deep underground in the earth to generate an electric current.
It is a mechanism that a magnetic field is generated by the generation of an electric current.
The cause seems to be unclear, but it seems that the earth's magnetic field has a history of repeating reversals in a cycle of 200,000 to 300,000 years.
If you follow the direction of the compass pointing north, you will finally reach the north magnetic pole.
The position of this north magnetic pole seems to move little by little every day.
Recently, it is said that the position of the north magnetic pole is moving faster than ever before.
Even if it has never existed in the past, it is an astronomically immeasurable short period since human beings started measuring.
That speed is about 55 kilometers a year.
Is the flow of iron-containing magma changing deep underground?
And in the last 100 years, the earth's magnetic field has weakened by as much as 6 percent.
The magnetic field near the equator is weaker than that of the poles, but it is said that places where the magnetic field is so weak that there is almost no magnetic field near the equator have recently been observed.
Furthermore, it seems that the reversal of the earth's magnetic field has not occurred in the last 700,000 years.
Perhaps the reversal of the magnetic poles has already begun.
A miracle that life can exist
Solar wind, cosmic rays, changes in the earth's magnetic field, etc.
The more we know about the threats and benefits to the creatures on the earth, the more we feel that the stability of life on the earth is a gift of all balances and miracles.
What happens if a powerful solar flare hits the earth directly when the earth's magnetic field is reversed and the earth's magnetic field, which is a barrier that protects life, is lost?
A solar wind with electric charge and mass, a huge solar flare will blow directly onto the earth's atmosphere.
It's going to be pretty scary.
It may be that all artificial satellites are down.
Also, it seems that it will take about 1000 years to reverse the earth's magnetic field.
Dividing 1000 years by the approximately 20000 kilometers from the North Pole to the South Pole of the Earth gives a calculation of 20 kilometers per year.
When I have such a delusion, as always, I am reminded of the difference in time scale between humankind and the universe.
Such a phenomenon that seems to be dangerous is a fact that has been experienced many times for life that has lived on the earth for a long time. Life will not die, but it is likely to be a time of great change.
But science and technology, an experience completely unknown to humankind trapped in civilization,
If that happens now, it will do some damage to civilization.
Is it possible to overcome human civilization, such a crisis, safely?
It is likely to be a time of great change, both in terms of human civilization.
Solar wind and cosmic rays
As I mentioned in my previous blog, it is not necessary if there is no solar wind, and it is said that the solar wind protects the earth's environment from even worse cosmic rays to a comfortable environment for life.
The solar wind is a general term for all particles, electromagnetic waves, and magnetic fields emitted from the sun.
This solar wind can be seen as a shape.
That is when the comet approaches the sun.
The comet's tail is a phenomenon that can be seen when the gas and particles ejected from the comet are blown away by the solar wind.
The tail never blows in the direction of the sun.
The solar wind is constantly changing, strengthening and weakening due to changes in the activity of the sun.
It is known that there is a correlation that the number of cosmic rays increases as the solar wind weakens.
The solar wind creates the heliosphere beyond the orbit of Neptune in our solar system.
In November 2018, it was announced that Voyager 2 had escaped from the heliosphere created by such a solar wind.
The equipment installed in Voyager 2 measured that the solar wind suddenly declined and the number of strong cosmic rays increased rapidly, which was found.
Thanks to this solar wind and solar magnetic field, it weakens and prevents cosmic rays that fall in large quantities from all directions in the universe.
The speed is so fast and high energy that it is incomparable to the speed of flying cosmic rays and the solar wind.
Even though the flying particles are the same as the solar wind, their energy is incomparably high.
While the speed of the solar wind is about 500 kilometers per second, some cosmic rays exceed 200,000 kilometers per second.
Since the energy increases in proportion to the mass particles and the square of the velocity, the energy is incomparably stronger than that of the solar wind.
It is the solar wind, which sometimes harms human activity, that weakens the energy of these cosmic rays and protects the earth.
The sun with the sunspots gone
Sunspots that are observed every time it clears.
I was hoping that the activity would become more active as the sunspots appeared.
It has returned to the state of zero sunspots.
The sunspots that were visible on August 10 seem to have diminished and disappeared.
Small little sunspots may have been measured, but they are completely invisible.
There are some vitiligo, so there are signs that black spots are likely to appear.
If you take a closer look at the image at a later date,
There was a small sunspot!
A small sunspot near the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.
Shooting method with increased magnification
Expansion by triple teleconverter
For solar photography, we added a double teleconverter (TC-301) from the previous system.
By increasing the magnification, it has become possible to capture even more details on the surface of the sun.
The new total focal length is 300 x 2 x 2 x 1.4 = 1680 mm f22.4
Shooting with 1 aperture, f31.4
I'm stacking teleconverters, but in order to stack them, I need to scrape the metal part of the mount a little.
I'll talk about that soon.
It will be a modified product, so if you intend to sell the teleconverter second hand, it is not a recommended method.
In addition, it will be a method that is not covered by the guarantee.
Manufacturers don't apply guarantees to bad people who don't listen.
As usual, the ND filter for dimming the bright sun uses ND400 and ND16 in layers.
Even the old Nikon Sanyon and triple teleconverters form a sharp image.
Once again, I was impressed with the high optical performance of the old Sanyon and the teleconverter.
The color of the sun
The color setting on the camera, the white balance is 5500K (Kelvin), and the daylight (daylight) is the color temperature based on the daytime sun.
Therefore, when I take a picture of the daytime sun with a daylight of 5500K, it looks pure white.
Sometimes what is the true color of the sun? However, if you take a picture, it depends on the standard color.
Based on the daylight, it can be said that the sun surface of 5800K is slightly bluish white.
If you lower the color temperature according to the incandescent sphere, it will turn blue, and conversely, if you raise the color temperature in cloudy mode and sunny shade mode, it will change from yellow to orange.
The color of the sun changes depending on the standard color temperature, so it can be said to be very vague.
In the first place, in terms of color temperature, the concept of color itself is relative.
Recommended white balance
The white balance setting when shooting the sun selected by the manager is the flash setting.
This is the default, and I like it because it gives the color of the sun that the caretaker imagines.
For the finishing of the image, the photograph with good conditions is selected and composited.
This time, a total of 14 sheets.
In addition to adjusting the tone on the tone curve, sharpening is also performed so that the appearance of the surface can be easily understood.
By shooting with this new system and post-processing, the granular spots on the surface of the sun emerged, and the details were captured in more detail, increasing the three-dimensional effect.
At the end
There are sunspots on the surface of the sun, but there are very few and only small ones.
The activity situation is also very unstable, as if you think that a sunspot has appeared, it disappears.
It seems difficult to say that the 25th period of solar activity has begun.
Rather, it seems that the 24th period is not over yet because of the sunspots at low latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere.
As usual, the next 25th active season should come from high latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere.
The 24th active period of the sun started in 2008, and if the 25th period does not start until 2021 next year, the cycle will be 13 years.
Yes, 13 years, similar to what was observed before the Maunder Minimum began.
I'm sure it will come, but I don't want it to be in a situation like the Maunder Minimum.
Isn't it similar to such a postponement concept, the disposal of spent fuel at nuclear power plants?
If this is the entrance to the Maunder Minimum, will the recent unseasonable weather continue to strengthen for the next 70 years?
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