David Smith

As forecast the sky was clear early this morning so I was out for a look. Quiet in white light again but some nice activity in Ca-K which gave me a chance to play with my processing technique again. Will let you judge the results below. Thoughts, comments & suggestions welcomed as always. My mosaics still need a bit of work so I can present them a little better but I'm reasonably happy with the result. Some nice proms on show so caught the following with the ASI178 binned 2x2 to help with contrast.

Thanks for posting this, applied to my Ca-K mosaic from the 9th and I found proms I didn't know I had!

Had some time on my hands this morning so spent it productively wandering SGL Came across this thread on ImPPG workflow Decided to have a play around applying this to my Ca-K FD taken on the 9th. My processing has always been pretty basic and whenever I get the urge to try and improve it I end up having to do something else, like go to work or I've been efficient and deleted all my raw data! This time however that was not the case and I actually managed to spend enough time to get a result that I think is an improvement not just different! So first up is my FD from the 9th: It's far from my best work, a little bright in the centre and the panes are all affected slightly differently by variable seeing. Not much I can do about that but going back to the stacked frames that came out of AS!3 and using this workflow as a guide I ended up with this Hey presto I have proms in what I thought was just a surface shot! Still needs some work:- 1. I need to leave more space around the limb in each frame in future so as to allow room for any proms 2. I still don't understand how to use adaptive sharpening in ImPPG effectively. If anyone knows of a good tutorial on this I would be most grateful. Any thoughts, comments or suggestions as to what else I might try would be appreciated. Strange how things play out, I almost imaged yesterday but found the seeing was a tragedy and decided not to bother. Had I done so I would have cleared my hard drive to maximize available space and this may never have happened! Forecast is for clear skies tomorrow,suffice to say I will be eager for some more data to play with and probably disappointed too knowing UK weather. Thanks @Nigella Bryant

Took me a while to spot it but got there in the end! Good capture, I wonder what it is? appears not to be moving in a linear fashion but that could be an optical illusion. What equipment were you using?

Hello Richard, from a fellow Oxfordshire resident.

Awesome, welcome to the Ca-K imagers club

Oh, Ca-K too. Love it

Gee, thanks

Thanks Dave. I've been the opposite, bus with jobs and work all week so trying to make the most of Sol today. Thought I'd put temptation in your path Thanks Geoff. Due to cloud up here later this afternoon, hopefully get a BBQ in before it really turns though. Just thought I'd rub it in a bit

Thought I would get some imaging in before the weather breaks tomorrow. Although interesting to peruse the white light disk there was nothing to image. Ca-K on the other hand had a little more to offer, disk was fairly quiet but there was at least some proms to try and catch. Full disk 6 pane mosaic @ native 1000mm focal length of the Evostar 120 A reasonably obvious plage area was all I had for close up opportunities. This one shot with the Revelation 2.5x barlow in place. Proms were shot @1000mm again but the camera binned to help with the low contrast.

See if I can get a look in Ca-K tomorrow for those proms. Nice work Steve

Nice. Broken cloud here so I decided not to bother.

Decided to grab some solar before the weather changes. Seeing was not great and my Ca-K @2500mm really did not work. White light is a bit soft but could be worse Surprisingly given the conditions, the close ups came out ok. Ca-K Full Disk. 6 pane disk shot on the Evostar And the AR on it's own.

Disappointed to see AR12759 has vanished from white light still something to see in Ca-K though. Not great conditions today to be honest, crossed winds, some high level cloud and a blowing a hoolie at times at ground level. Seeing was extremely variable too. The Evostar didn't last long in the wind but I did manage to get something from it before the wind forced a change of track. Full disk in Ca-K, the usual double exposure for proms and surface detail composited in GIMP. And the few shots from a frustrating session with the big Evostar "sail". Plage area and prominence @1000mm native focal length And a somewhat ambitious attempt to image the plage area @2500mm

Cracking shot Dave 👌

Unexpected gap(s) in the cloud cover this morning allowed me a look at the new AR. Had hoped to get some hi res Ca-K shots but seeing was average at best and there was a bit of a breeze to boot (not good with the Evostar on the mount). Initial session with the Evostar was curtailed by cloud but then skies cleared again a little later so grabbed the Bresser for some full-disks. So here's the initial Evostar shots at native 1000mm focal length. The AR in Ca-K and White Light and then the faint prominences in Ca-K Then the full disk shots with the Bresser stopped down to 50mm. The Ca-K disk is a combination of two layers; one for proms and another for 'surface'.

Awesome. Weather is poor here, looks like I won't get a look-in until the weekend at the earliest

That's a great disk Nicos.

Super disks Steve 👌

Working 2-10pm at the moment as an allegedly "essential worker", working quite well for me as the weather has been fine Managed a session with the Evostar this morning, first of the year. Nothing to see in white light with the Lacerta wedge so switched to Ca-K imaging. A couple of nice bright plage areas and some faint proms on show. Probalby should crop these down a bit but was rushing to finish up before heading to the office! Enjoy the sunshine, those who have it.

Awesome pic Steve!

Yes, the AR102xs is horrible for Ca-K at full aperture but respectable when masked off to 50mm. The shorter focal length of the Bresser means I can grab a full disk in 1 frame which is important when the weather is "dynamic" as it was today, no chance of getting multiple frames for a full disk mosaic with clouds and showers around! Given better conditions I use my Evostar 120 as weapon-of-choice which needs no masking and has better resolving capability but I need 6 panes for a full disk.

Finally a weekend day when it's doing something other than lashing in rain! Still blowing a hoolie and some sharp showers around but I can work around those. Dusted off the solar imaging gear and grabbed a couple of captures between the showers. So just a Ca-K disk today, nothing going on in white light and no proms (of any significance) on show in Ca-K. Shot with the AR102xs masked off to 50mm, 1000 frames with the ASI178MM and Lunt B1200 Ca-K module. Processed in AS3!, ImPPG & GIMP. Certainly not my best work but good to get my first shot of 2020 in. Looking back my last solar image was on November 29, exactly 3 months ago.

Great set. Blowing a gale here so no chance of any solar for me today.

Super set Marty