October 25, 2014: 43-pane mosaic in H-alpha with monster spot

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Here are some of the H-alpha data I caught between the clouds today. Forty-three panes went into this mosaic, made with the little LS35 with TV PowerMate 2.5x and DMK 21. Stacked mainly in AS!2 but three panes required Registax to get them right for some reason. Ran all the stacked frames through my LRGaussDeconv program under Linux (single command using a little bash script), using sigma=1.5 and 100 iterations (Lucy Richardson deconvolution). The panes were stitched fully automatically with AutoStitch64. The only real manual work was doing unsharp masking and curves in GIMP. The result in grey scale:

In pseudo-colour:

and inverted pseudo-colour:

[Davey-T]

Blimey, 43 panes, must have had less clouds over there I couldn't even manage a disc from 2 halfs 

Nicely captured.

Dave

[JB80]

That is excellent Michael, well worth the effort for a monster mosaic.

Your LR decon programme seems to be working a treat!

[jabeoo1]

Amazing !

I always really like the inverted images.  Congratulations on some lovely high definition finishes on them all though, they look amazing. 

The magnetic forces going on there are visibly quite scary, our sun is trying to twist itself apart right now.

Is it true to assume we are currently at the solar maximum then ? 

[David Smith]

43 panes

It is a great image though Michael, well done.

[Tinker1947]

That's a really nice image or 43 images...

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Thanks everyone. It was good to get some fresh data after a three-week gap

[Pete Presland]

superb disc, with all the excitement around the giant spot the massive filament has been mostly ignored.

[Space Cowboy]

Tremendous effort Michael putting together a 43 pane mosaic!

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Thanks, Stuart and Pete. It is not as much work as it sounds. The main work is data acquisition. After that, I first stack the flat(s) (H-alpha and white light). I then select the correct flat, select all the files that must be stacked in AS!2, do analysis and set alignment points in a grid, press the stack button, and all data are stacked. I then run them in a batch through my LR deconvolution program (all of 2 minutes) and dump the results into AutoStitch. A few final tweaks in GIMP and I am done. As you can see, most is automated.

[Floater]

You're right, Pete. Normally we would be oohing and aahing about that huge filament. But the spot has us transfixed ...

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I must say I love that massive filament as well. It looks like a giant centipede or some creature from the Burgess Shales.