Dave Smith

Thank you both very much. I now seem to get between 80 and 90 frames per sec having changed the USB traffic and a crop. That is perfectly acceptable to me.

By the way, I have been away for just over a week and have just tried the new settings.

Even with full frame I am getting ~60 f/s

Dave

Thanks Alan. I do  have an SSD.

Dave

Thank you. That is interesting. In that way there is plenty of room to crop and have a decent overlap.

Dave

Thank you Alan. Very helpful. Next time out I will give it a try.

Dave

Thank you Nicholas. I did try a square ROI but it made little difference. I don't know how to do the the other two.

My scope is a single  stacked 80 mm Lunt. 

Dave 

Seeing some lovely images on here using a 178MM made me look into choosing the right camera for a scope and concluded that with my 80mm Lunt that I would benefit using the smaller pixels of the 178 for full disc images.

There is one snag. My 174 will run at 110 frames per second whereas the 178 only does around 18 per second. For a clear sky that is not a problem but when chasing gaps in the clouds it is a different matter. Another snag is that I can only capture around 90% of the full disc and so two exposures are needed.

These two images are with a 178.

Dave

Thank you very much IB20, laudropb and Sunshine. Your comments are much appreciated.

Dave

6 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

Superb work, Dave 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

Thanks Jeremy.

Dave

Dave

2 minutes ago, IB20 said:

Ace, you caught the plasma vortex that I saw! It was over so quickly, in between a quick rain shower I’d say it couldn’t have been there longer than 15-20 mins.

Thank you.  I noticed that there is quite a difference between that region on the full disc image and the one with the barlow even though only minutes apart. There was too much cloud to investigate further.

Dave 

More images can be seen at https://mysolarpics.co.uk

Dave

Very nice. I didn't  have any chance today.

Dave

Rather impressive 👏

Dave

41 minutes ago, fwm891 said:

Superb Dave, yet again.

Thank you  Francis  and every one else. The problem with doing an annimation is that a reliably clear sky is needed and after spending an hour or two, there is no guarantee that it will show anything of interest. I have been lucky these last two weeks.

It would seem that rotation in a prom is reasonably common.

Dave

A reliably clear sky, so suitable for an animation.

 This animation consists of 90 frames, 60 sec apart played back at 10 frames per sec.

Dave

6 hours ago, wesdon1 said:

Hi @Dave Smith is this animation captured using a white light type solar wedge, or is it done with HA 'scope? Or both combined? Also, is solar astrophotography as difficult to master as night time DSO astrophotography? Apologies for so many q's Dave, it's just I'm considering getting into basic solar Astro-imaging. Thanks Dave!

Clear Skies, Wes

You cannot see prominences in white light. They are clearly visible in hydrogen alpha but the kit gets very expensive. White light astrophotography is much simpler than for DSOs but you really need a different type of camera. I use an ASI174MM, which is a mono camera that can take frames at a rapid rate. The scope needs to be filtered with either Baader film, or a Herschel wedge. In white light you can see sunspots and depending how large your scope is, the details of umbra and penumbra. The software for capture and processing is mostly free. Hope this helps, please ask if you would like more detail.

Dave

7 hours ago, Peter Drew said:

Superb animation, shows how much we miss observing visually in real time.      🙂

Thank you Peter. Iagree. Even though I  could see some change as the images slowly came in, I  had no idea of rotation.

Dave

The prom from yesterday has virtually disappeared, but when I saw this one, thought that it was worth an animation.

This runs from 0942 to 1120 UT and consists of 90 frames each separated by a minute but played back at 10 frames per sec (i.e 600 x faster)

Enjoy

Dave

Fantastic.

Dave

8 minutes ago, fwm891 said:

Superb Dave. Watching just draws me in...

Thanks Francis

Dave

9 minutes ago, laudropb said:

Hi Dave. Another great video. When I saw this prom today I was sure it would lift off. But it’s still there 2 hours later.

It certainly looked as if it was off.  I find their behaviour fascinating. 

Thanks for the comment.

Dave

That prom just cried out for an animation.

Enjoy

Dave

Another from this morning.

Dave

With these reliable clear sky conditions doing animations becomes much more straightforward.

Here are animations from the last 4 days.

With the first one I noticed that AR3327 was rather bright and probably flaring so immediately started an animation run.

This was on the 7 June

Next day I tried a prom in the NE

Encouraged by that yesterday I tried another.

and here is the only big prom from today

All good fun. All the "normal white light and H-alpha images will be on my website.

Dave

1 hour ago, laudropb said:

Another great set of images Dave . I have just compared them to sketches I made this morning and I must be getting better because they match up quite well lol.

Thank you. Do you post your sketches anywhere, I would love to see them. I am totally useless at sketching.

Dave