AbsolutelyN

Wow, that's absolutely stunning Adam. Lovely processing.

Been a difficult week or two so no astrophotos to show for all the recent clear skies but managed a couple of very quick solar images today. Favourite is this quick animation of convection of surface granulation over about 20 mins. The spots are AR2848. AR2845 AR2846

Thanks Craig. Inspired by your recent Jupiter/Saturn images - had a go other night and failed miserably. Does the ADC make a big difference?

Quick image of the small grouping of sunspots AR2842 - approx. 9:30am this morning.

Fantastic images, tonnes of detail. Nicely done!

Thanks Craig, yes I did use a continuum filter. You should get a full aperture filter for your 300mm beast - that would have some serious resolution!

Thanks, it's with a Televue 3x barlow so 3600mm focal length. Wind was not too bad so it's almost full frame of the 178mm. Updated higher res version on Astrobin https://www.astrobin.com/full/n5i5uz/0/?nc=

AR2835 in a very brief bit of reasonable seeing. Taken with 250pds and 178MM

I don't think it's an either or. Both are incredibly powerful image editing software packages. You can do everything in either of them but personally being already very familiar with photoshop I use a mixture of both and I find they compliment each other very well. PixInsight offers very specialised tools which makes many things a lot easier - gradient removal and star reduction for example. So if I was to pick one for astro I'd go with PixInsight, but both make for a very powerful combination.

@GreatAttractor that's a superb animation, very nicely done.

That's amazing - what scope was it taken with? Fairly new to solar and only have white light setup but these are my best two so far. Taken with 250mm Newtonian (stopped down to 200mm).

Thanks ... is it June already? 🙂

I'm curious too know which is more accurate too ... I use sharpcap with no issues but generally only do 1 to 2 min exposures.

Thanks Adrian, we only had a couple of hours clear sky this morning before clouds rolled in so was lucky to get anything at all as seeing was dubious.

Not the best seeing this morning but eventually managed to pull out some detail, granulation and nice faculae. Taken 8:17am Colorized version on astrobin - https://www.astrobin.com/0mtmlx/0/

I used the Starizona one with my RASA 8 and it was very good. There was no ZWO option when I bought it. If you go with ZWO make sure its exactly the same measurements as the RASA is extremely sensitive regarding distance to sensor, it needs to be exact. There is also an Artesky filter holder - but its not a draw system, just holds a single filter so probably better for OSC rather than mono. I've heard it is very good though and if I still had a RASA that's what I'd be using for my 2600MC. https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/language/en/info/p11535_Artesky-2--Filterhalter-und-T2-Adapter-fuer-Celestron-RASA8-Astrograph.html

Superb!

We've had more clear skies since April than in the entire of last winter so I'm certainly making the most any clear skies I can get. I was unsure how possible it would be without proper dark skies and very short nights but so far so good and soon nights start getting longer again. This is 5.5 hours over two not very dark nights last weekend - approx 23:30 to 2:30.

Another thumbs up for PixInsight - my view is that it is absolutely superb but you need to invest time to learn it and get used to the user interface.

Thanks all - I think I just got lucky with a few seconds of good seeing!

Better seeing today but rather breezy for the 250pds. Taken 11:32 with 3x barlow and 178mm. Colorized version:

Thanks, the atmosphere was so turbulent today that I didn't think I was going to get anything but finally late afternoon after half a dozen tries finally caught a brief steady point - only a few seconds but that all you need.

It's actually an 8" scope - I had to stop the aperture down to the size constraint of an a4 sheet of baader solar film. Taken with a 3x barlow so 3600mm. Interesting comparison - needs good seeing though.

Cloud was very variable last night but I left the scope running in case it cleared. It managed 60 mins worth of data but lost framing due to clouds. Taken with 250PDS and 2600MC, 30 x 2 mins, Bortle 5.

This is the best I've managed so far, not sure if it was bad seeing or heat reflecting off the roof but could not get good focus until this afternoon and even then only barely. Taken with 250pds and 178mm at about 15:20