Amateur Astronomer Captures Incredible Movie of Looping Prominences on the Sun

By Nancy Atkinson August 22, 2013
Amateur Astronomer Captures Incredible Movie of Looping Prominences on the Sun

Takahashi Refractor TOA 130mm, Coronado Solarmax90 double stacked with Coronado PST etalon and blocking filter BF15, Televue 1.8x Barlow and Point Grey Camera Grasshopper3 ICX674 sensor. 120 videos of 10s spaced by 20s at 40 frames/s taken the 20/08/2013 between 7:25 and 8:25 GMT. Processing: Autostakkert2 + Registax6 and export as video on Registax5, Finalizing the video in VirtualDub and export GIF

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com