My first Ha solar images...

[smerral]

Well here they are folks!

OK, it's the morning after and looking at these I'm dead chuffed with them seeing it's my first go. With a bit more time, practice and patience I think I could have fine tuned those prominences a bit more, but otherwise I'm happy. Set up was the Coronada PST on the AZ synscan mount. I tried the Atik first, but being a colour camera it was obviously lacking resolution for Ha imaging. Then I tried the spc900 with the b/w chip. WOW! The details jumped right out at me! :-o The images below were captured using the webcam and 2x Cemax barlow for the wider field shots, the Tal 3x for the middling close ups, and Tal 3x plus extension for the close up of the sunspot and the prominences. I have a couple more still to process. All were around 200 stacked frames (apart from the one at 5ps where I only managed 80).

It was a bit windy and my tracking could have been better, so most of these were captured at 30 fps. The exceptions are the first one, done at 10fps, and the third one done at 5fps. The sun will definitely stand a high frame rate, but I think the 5fps benefits from greater sharpness and detail. Gain was set low throughout, and I actually turned it to zero for the close ups at the end. More experimentation needed. The first shot with the prominences is a combination of two captures with different exposures. I'm not 100% happy with the final result so I may have another play.

The spot is AR1263 and the brighter area near the limb is AR1261.

All in all.... a good session!

[Armsoft]

Some good images for a first go at Solar imaging, I only hope that mine are as good when I pick up my PST tomorrow and get to use it this week.

[smerral]

Some good images for a first go at Solar imaging, I only hope that mine are as good when I pick up my PST tomorrow and get to use it this week.

Thanks! Which camera are you using? Unfortunately my Atik is a colour cam, but if you have a b/w chip you should get great images!

[Photosbykev]

very good first go at Solar