David Smith

Congrats @Montana well deserved.

All very quiet at the moment. Good captures nonetheless. Quite a bit of cloud here else I would probably have had a go myself.

Nice. I spotted them rising in the east last night, very pretty.

Some good captures and a nice looking prominence. We had intermittent sunshine here yesterday but I was busy re-roofing the shed. Had there been some activity I may have changed my priorities.

Caught some lovely blue skies this morning so made the most of it! Not seen the Sun so as to be able to image it since the 8th! Clean disk in white light so visual inspection only. Not a huge amount going on in Ca-K but enough to keep the interest. There are a few proms on the full disk image and a nice plage area which I then imaged in H alpha. Plenty going on in H alpha with lots of proms and some structure / filaments in the area where Ca-K shows plage structure.

Nice job Steve, sometimes they just need a little persuasion!

Scruffy bit, new entry in the Oxford dictionary of astronomy then

Good catch, all clouds and rain here.

Good catch Steve. Seems to be nothing but work and rain here at the moment.

I've got one of these and just had a poke around, can't see any evidence of a t-thread hiding anywhere. The twist-up eye-guard appears to be glued in place and the twist mechanism doesn't appear detachable.

Thanks John. Enjoy the weather while it lasts! We have storms forecast here for the next couple of days. I'll be at work anyway so no imaging for me until next weekend.

No Sun here this morning so spent my time wisely putting this together...

Left-to-right, top-to-bottom - Skywatcher 2" diagonal with extension tube and 35nm H alpha filter attached, Quark Combo Chromosphere, Lacerta Herschel Wedge with 2" nose piece, 2" UV/IR cut and continuum filter attached, Lunt B1200 Ca-K Module, ZWO ASI178MM, USB cable,ES 2x focal extender, ES 3x focal extender, Revelation 2x barlow, Revelation 2.5x barlow, Skywatcher Hyperflex 7-21 zoom eyepiece.

Purchased the case a few weeks back but waited to fit it out until I had the Quark and a few other bits that were on order. Still a little bit of space in case I find another item I "need" With my solar case I have a "grab-one-case and everything is in it" type of setup. I have to grab my objective masks, Quark power pack and laptop separately obviously (oh yeah and the mount and scope) but everything else is in here, ready to go (filters attached, etc). Should reduce the number of trips back into the house any way!

I've got a second case which will likely become my primary observing case with my ES eyepieces, filters and the like in and my old Revelation eyepiece kit case will become my night-time imaging case. This will have the ASI120mc-s, QHY5-II, cables and a few other bits in. I might buy a bigger case in the end so I can put the AZ GTi in the case too.

Also did an essential upgrade to my solar scope, fitting my trusty Evostar 120 with a snazzy green dovetail bar 😍

Looks the part now with the upgraded focuser and pimped out with the green dovetail.

Thanks all. Positive comments are always nice  First time since I've had the Quark that I've had several hours of unbroken sunshine. Scope was out on the mount until lunch time and I spent quite a bit of time visually watching that prom and "fiddling" with the tuner on the Quark to see what I could see. Forecast doesn't look as good tomorrow but fingers crossed.

Too hot to sleep last night so was up early and out imaging not long after 7. Lots going on but the seeing was a little hit & miss to be honest. Ca-K and white light seemed to suffer the worst, I think the seeing actually settled a bit by the time I got to H alpha.

Start off with Ca-K, full disk via 6 pane mosaic @ native 1000mm of the Evostar 120, Prominence @2000mm and a 3 pane pano of the active regions shot at 2000mm focal length.

White light with the Lacerta wedge, continuum & UV/IR filter shot at 2000mm focal length.

H Alpha shot at 2000mm focal length with the Quark and ES 2x focal extender.

4 Pane mosaic of the active regions, proms on both sides of the disk with a 3 image series showing the evolution of the largest of them.

Evolution of this prom over 3 shots

Sunshine in Scotland! Must be global warming

Nice shot Roger. Lots of clouds and some rain here today.

Nice John. I can never decide between mono and colour images, I like the false colour but sometimes think I can see more detail in the mono images

Finally, some half decent seeing! After yesterday and Thursdays dismal showing today the seeing was actually not too bad. I still struggled a bit in Ca-K but then the shorter wavelength suffers more than longer wavelengths. Managed to get something in all three lights today, FD & proms in Ca-K, white-light close ups and proms and close-ups (what else with a Quark) in H alpha. 75GB of data all in all, hence it's taken me a while to get it all processed in and around doing other things.

Start off with the Ca-K and the usual 6 pane full disk mosaic

Close Up of the bright plage region. I tried to to mosaic this region but one pane came out really soft

Ca-K Proms

Then some white light close ups. I failed to shoot a flat for white light so the granulation shot is not the best

Finally the H Alpha. Managed to mosaic the region around AR12768

My first mosaic with the Quark, albeit just 2 panes but you have to start somewhere! Next up AR 12767

And the proms, 2 different processing methods for the same image below - which do you prefer?

A couple of smaller proms also on show. I shot these in Ca-K too but haven't managed to do anything with the data yet.

Maybe these give away which process I prefer?

Have to say based on experience to date I am loving the Quark, visually it is as good as it is for imaging. I see very little in the way of Newtons Rings with my AS178  and flats are optional as the etalon seems pretty flat across the frame. My only niggling issue is not with the Quark at all, I do love full disk images and a Quark really isn't the best tool for that job......

Awesome John!

Nicely done. Horrible seeing here too, followed by clouds.

A brief cloud-free window early this morning, unfortunately the seeing was almost as bad as it was on Thursday! Attempted some Ca-K again but the seeing really was not up to it. I did come away with these semi-decent close-ups and some white lights though . Clouds came in before I got to H alpha 

IMages from Thursday but ran out of time to process with work "and stuff". Seeing was horrible and I binned all the Ca-K data as it was ruined by the seeing. Managed to salvage these taken with the Evostar 120 (stopped down to 100mm), Combo Quark Chromosphere and ES 2x barlow.

Fingers crossed for some clear bits over the weekend.

Just had a first look with the Quark this morning, that prom is awesome. Hopefully get some imaging done today but clouds have intervened at the moment

50 minutes ago, xtreemchaos said:

of course you can David, anything is possable if ye put you mind to it, look at it like a challange and it will work honist 😀. charl.

I love your optimism Charl

Nicely done Charl. Good to see you back posting images again.

Might seem an odd question, I'll explain. My southern horizon is full of trees obscuring the big planets from view from anywhere in my garden. I'm not keen to cart my kit off to some field to do planetary observing / imaging but really miss the big planets. So I thought maybe could just observe from an open bedroom window? We have a south facing bedroom window and Jupiter and Saturn clear the tree line around 10pm now. The only mount I have at the moment is my CG-4 which is not very practical to cart upstairs and setup but I do have a Manfrotto 190XPRO4 which I use for photography and could deploy as an alternative given a suitable head. For visual I could put the Skymax 127 on an AZ5 but would like to try my hand at some imaging which would really necessitate a driven mount. So my plan would be to pick up an AZ GTi, mount it on the Manfrotto, add the Skymax 127 and away we go. The bit I'm unsure of is if I can get a basic alignment from the bedroom window. As I understand it you can do a one star align with this mount but I cannot find a list of available stars to choose from?

Any assistance gratefully received.

Thanks

David