GreatAttractor

On Thursday I captured cute little explosions on CaK (that's a first for me). There were no corresponding X-ray flares reported by NOAA.

(Note: videos can be looped by choosing an option under right mouse button click.)

15-second intervals, 15 minutes total:

Bonus track: minor activity in Hα (also, no corresponding flare listed); 20-second intervals, 38 minutes total:

CaK setup: achro 90/600 mm, PowerMate 2.5x, Lunt CaK B600.
Hα setup: RC8, Aries ERF, LS50THa etalon.

Everything shot with Blackfly S (IMX273), processed with AS!3 and ImPPG.

M1.1-class flare on Monday in the AR 2993/2994 complex (20-second intervals, 2:05 h total):

GSO RC8 with Aries ERF and Lunt 50 etalon, camera: Blackfly S (IMX273), stacked with AS!3, processed and aligned in ImPPG.

Homepage: https://greatattractor.github.io/imppg/

New version available for download at: https://github.com/GreatAttractor/imppg/releases/tag/v0.6.5

Bug fixes

• Invalid behavior of the Brightness Normalization dialog for certain combinations of system language and regional settings

• Saving and loading of settings files for certain combinations of system language and regional settings

I have (with a 1/3" planetary camera). E.g.:

2x2 mosaic

Time lapse of a surge, 1.5-minute intervals, 3 h total:

On 03/12/2021 at 15:01, Rusted said:

These SC  filters produce an apple green image with [claimed] increased contrast.

I can confirm the contrast increase; see the video below (150 mm Newtonian, Baader solar film, no gamma correction; Sun at high elevation, so no chromatism or atmospheric dispersion at play).

You can ignore the first part (Solar Continuum without UV/IR cut), as old versions of SC leaked infrared. This is no longer an issue.

I use this (also used to carry the stuff from the car):

My results from Sunday (using Lunt 50 etalon; all stacked in AS!3 and processed with ImPPG). Note: you can enable animation looping; right-click them and chose "Loop".

90 mm refractor, Chameleon 3 (ICX445), poor seeing:

A small surge (?) (30-second intervals, 0:30 h total):

Off-band (with a slightly detuned etalon); I like how everything seems to be more lively (30-second intervals, 0:24 h total):

In the morning, when the seeing was better, I was using the RC8 setup. The results are better than last time, but I don't know yet what helped the most:

• better seeing overall, for longer periods (didn't have the SSM with me)
• more frames to stack thanks to a faster camera
• replacing the Lunt's dyed-glass mini-ERF with Baader 35 nm Hα filter (as suggested by @Kitsunegari, thanks!); maybe I was indeed having thermal issues before

I shot two animations, with the Chameleon (35 fps) and the Blackfly S (IMX273, 90 fps). The first yielded just a few good stacks (but that could be due to variable seeing), e.g.:

The best stacks of the second animation were similar or slightly better:

And the animation (nothing of note happened, unfortunately); 20-second intervals, 0:55 h total:

Slightly more aggresive processing:

Very nice results!

But 10 000 frames (100 s) sounds a bit too much time-wise; at this scale I'd expect the features to evolve noticeably. Can you try processing just 2000-3000 frames?

Seeing on Saturday was medium to poor, but I managed to get a usable still out of the RC8/Lunt 50 setup:

Alas, after the morning M-class flare (during my breakfast), not much happened in AR2822. Just the usual rising/falling of small spikes, and a small surge in the upper FOV (90 mm aperture, 30-second intervals, 1:49 h total):

No, of course, uploading to YT/Vimeo etc. is usually pointless. They recompress the videos, which in case of solar degrades fine details dramatically. But here you can upload directly the video you compressed yourself.

Nice catch! Can't remember seeing a floater like this before.

Suggestion: you can upload animations on SGL (and other forums running on more modern engines) as MP4 videos, this can drastically reduce file sizes compared to GIF. E.g. my animation from the other thread was 174 MiB as a GIF, and < 10 MiB as a H264-encoded video. At a bitrate preserving all details.

You can convert to videos e.g. with the free FFMPEG tool, using an invocation like this:
 

Quote

ffmpeg -i some_input.gif -vcodec h264 -vb 5000000 -pix_fmt yuv420p some_output.mp4

All shot on Saturday with 90/660 mm achromat, PGR Chameleon 3 mono (ICX445), processed with Stackistry, ImPPG and GIMP.

90 mm Lunt50 mod:

Encouraged by an M-class flare in AR2871 earlier this week, I dutifully captured data for a time lapse, alas, not much has happened. A minor C1.0-flare at 11:30 UTC and a B7.2 at 12:04 UTC, also a part of the upper filament lifted off at some point. 30-second intervals, 4:45 h total:

Mandatory full disc:

Lunt B600 CaK module, PowerMate 2.5x:

Early morning seeing was really good despite the short wavelength:

Yes, it's described here.

Yesterday's results from the RC8/Aries ERF/Lunt 50 etalon setup (all shot with Chameleon 3 mono, ICX445). Seeing wasn't particularly good for this aperture, but I managed to capture a few stills and a short time lapse:

Animation of AR 2859, 30-second intervals, 48 minutes total:

It's beautiful. I really need to create an intermediary 5"-aperture setup for Hα.

Very nicely done. Looks like you've nailed the etalon tuning, things are nicely uniform.

What a catch! That would be a "surge", if I'm not mistaken.

Fantastic! Especially the big flare.

1 hour ago, Montana said:

BB code used to work?

Try the "Other Media" button and choose "Insert image from URL".

White light – Mak 180, Baader solar film ND 3.8, Solar Continuum filter, 4-minute intervals, 1:33 h total:

Hα – GSO RC8, Aries ERF, Lunt 50 etalon (not the best quality from this setup yet, the seeing could be better):

Great video indeed!

7 hours ago, Stu said:

Great to see the effects even around the nose of the plane, I guess where the air is being compressed around the fuselage

It seems to be the case. It's happening mostly in front of the nose and engine nacelles, not so much at the leading edges of the wings (which by design let the air go around them).

I found some plots of air's index of refraction depending on pressure here. As you can see, the change is a very small fraction, BUT apparently when imaging a tiny FOV, like we do with the Sun, it's sufficient.

Excellent animation.

About the rotation - I haven't seen anything like it either. Some pores circling each other, yes, but not a rotating developed spot.

23 hours ago, AbsolutelyN said:

I had to select an anchor point to align all the files to for a point of reference because after stacking they were not even close to being aligned.

You might be interested in ImPPG's image alignment feature.

Looks great!

What program do you use for stacking?

You can do that in CaK? Looks great indeed!

1 hour ago, tooth_dr said:

How did you classify it as a C4.0?

Based on NOAA Solar and Geophysical Event Reports. There's an archive here. My flare is this one:

:Product: 20210509events.txt
:Created: 2021 May 11 0357 UT
:Date: 2021 05 09
# Prepared by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, NOAA, Space Weather Prediction Center
# Please send comments and suggestions to SWPC.Webmaster@noaa.gov 
#
# Missing data: ////
# Updated every 5 minutes.
#                            Edited Events for 2021 May 09
#
#Event    Begin    Max       End  Obs  Q  Type  Loc/Frq   Particulars       Reg#
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

930 +     1338   1358      1409  G16  5   XRA  1-8A      C4.0    3.1E-03   2822
930 +     1351   1354      1356  SAG  G   RBR  1415      210               2822
930 +     1352   1359      1407  HOL  3   FLA  N15E51    SF      ERU       2822