Rusted

Another great set Marty.

Good job on both counts. Nicely crisp too!

As a final image here is maximum obscuration through the Kowa/Lumix G9 with the correct orientation. Complete with dust bunnies and ring like, colour artefacts from brightening in post processing. Had I thought about it more I should have mounted the camera and spotting scope on the refractors. Then I wouldn't have had to keep searching for the sun with the scope mounted on a locked up Manfrotto fluid head. My Sirui gimbal head has a much larger base screw so I couldn't quickly mount it on the dome base ring. The moon's bite out of the sun was far too large to capture in H-alpha at 1500mm focal length! So I had to quickly swap the '174 camera over to the Vixen. There's nothing like a rehearsal before the actual event!

I was incredibly lucky that the cloud remained thin until just before maximum. 12.37[CET] locally. The wedge had me completely fooled as to orientation. Maximum should have been a vertical cut from on top.

Very thin, high cloud isn't doing much damage. I am capturing the eclipse in white light using my 90/11 Vixen, Lunt 1.25" wedge and ASI174MM. My Lumix G9 is on my spotting scope for whole disk white light with Baader Solar Foil. Orientation! What's that?

Thin, high cloud. Forecast to thicken for the entire duration of the eclipse. Followed by full clearing to brilliant sunshine 2 seconds after the event. At least I didn't have to get up early to watch the clouds. Fortunately it stayed almost clear until max.

Congratulations on a very fine capture!

Frame rate is a constant battle between exposure, gain and available light. It is easy to see the FPS drop as the exposure setting increases. I try to keep exposure under 10m/s. For solar work this can mean a huge difference in FPS if the proms are overexposed to bring them out. I swap back to a BF with a much higher throughput to avoid long exposures, low frame rate and unwanted gain. I have regularly seen 300+FPS with 640x480 resolution to keep the enlarged prom[s] closely framed.

I use an Intel Core i7 8x 3600[?] ASUS N552 laptop with 16GB RAM with my ASI174MM. Model now discontinued but there must be matching successors. I recently upgraded to internal 1TB Samsung SSDs. It had only a 250GB SSD as purchased. It is noticeably quicker now than with external USB3 Samsung T5 SSDs in several sizes up to 1TB. Averaging ~100fps with 800x600 resolution in SharpCap3.2 yesterday. Faster still with 640x480. The laptop has a large UHD screen but I prefer to use a 27" AOC Hi-res monitor instead.

The transparency improved over the morning: So much so that I was able to use the 2.6x GPC for more scale.

Seeing wobbly and badly lacking in transparency. Thank goodness for ImPPG!

Some pictures of my restored MkIV. [Years ago now] The bare mounting and on my welded pedestal stand. 7"Ø thick wall tube. Massive rectangular section "feet." It is far too heavy to lift. After I welded it up I couldn't get it onto my car trailer. Luckily a colleague came along and helped me. The scope is a 6" f/8 Celestron. It suited the MkIV perfectly. You could thump the OTA and the image stayed still! I did a lot of handheld photography at the eyepiece back then.

That reminds me. You need a turnbuckle for fine, PA altitude adjustment on the MkIV. The tiny locking screws in the arcs have no holding power. So the PA slips in altitude. I used a galvanized fencing turnbuckle. It makes adjustment effortless and it stays put. The clamp on the end of the MkIV PA casting is from a car exhaust dealer. Regarding the MkIV's original, matt black, wrinkle paint: Try motorcycle customizers if you can't get the spray cans locally. You'll need a heat gun to warm the paint to get a nice, even wrinkle.

I know nothing about OnStep but: Let us know how you get on. I could do with a GOTO system which actually works as advertised. Several years after having paid lots of money for an AWR IH2 GOTO system I have never had a single GOTO find the sun! Nor anything else! Not even once in all that time! It can't even manage the short slew from horizontal, east facing parking position, to a low, rising sun in the East! I have spent countless hours confirming the alignment of my mount using multiples methods. It tracks perfectly, once the sun is centered. [My main interest is Solar imaging] The telescope's shadows always end up as long ovals after EVERY "GOTO" slew. So the errors must be in the GOTO instructions. The observatory site is entered correctly and has been checked a hundred times. I also have to check the LST [Local Sidereal Time] time from an online service before every session. The ASCOM[AWR] driver costs £50 a year for renewal. Even when it doesn't work. AWR slews are glacially slow. Measured in minutes per 90°. Twice that to cross from EAST TO WEST. ASCOM[AWR] routinely changes DEC drive direction from Negative to Positive. Which means the telescopes' noses end up on the observatory floor! You simply don't know which direction it will move unless you go into the IH2 menus at the start of every single session. NEVER WALK AWAY FROM AN AWR SLEW! Not even back to the safe parking position which you have used for years. It may forget that it isn't allowed to go north of the pier to park! This has happened lots of times and the slew has to be quickly stopped. Nor do you have any idea where a slew will end! But at least you have plenty of time for it to get there. While you dash off into the shrubbery. I just hope your aim is better than AWR's!

Why is the original 54MB? Here's a 38kb .jpg with slight Histogram adjustment.

Thanks for your interest. I use my three GPCs routinely. Depending entirely on the seeing conditions. Not only for increased image scale and framing of ROI/AR but to tame the PST's ring-shaped, sweet spot. I try to keep closely to the 200mm of the etalon inside focus rule and find it helps to obtain the best views. I am usually limited to 800x600 maximum frame size in SharpCap simply to avoid brighter, overexposed edges to the frame. Which are clearly visible on my 27" monitoring screen via my ASI174MM camera. SharpCap's maximum frame size of 1936x1080 always leaves me with unusable edges to the frame. Requiring heavy cropping in final processing. My PST etalon has its rubber ring [tuning sleeve] removed. So that I can tilt the core with a rod in a tuning hole. As well as rotate it normally to tune for minimum variations in brightness. I always aim for the most even, largest possible, darkest screen for my captures. This always seems to produce the sharpest and finest detail. So is presumably on-band for H-alpha.

Hi, I have wasted hours and hours trying to get PIPP to animate my solar .TIFFS I've tried AVI output and I've tried GIF animation output. [Endlessly!] Neither produces a moving video. PIPP happily processes my .TIFFs and tells me I have 23 frames output. I've tried all sorts of frame rates. But: When it come to viewing the resulting video there is only ever one frame. [Each frame is text time stamped by me.] I have viewed lots of YouTube guides without learning anything which helps. Please tell me where am I going wrong? 😢

Thin, high cloud is teasing. With an easterly wind blowing into the dome. AR12829 is looking amazing. To have two, such large and complex ARs at the same time is great.

That is quite some image scale!

The thermal "wobbles" are best avoided by early morning and late afternoon imaging or observing. Avoid baking hot surfaces between you and the sun. Roofs, asphalt, cars, etc. My Nextimage5 camera always made everything huge due to the small sensor size. That same magnification amplifies image distortion due to "the thermals."

Hi Damian, Nice, sharp images. I ought to try inversion but rarely have. BTW: I captured the triangular "sails" myself but didn't publish them. They were certainly an odd shape. Again, they weren't long lived in their most spectacular form. It's great to have the sun providing us with so much "entertainment."

Here's the live capture video at the flare's peak. https://youtu.be/dP35tOjvWO0

It wasn't until late afternoon that the cloud cleared. I was capturing away [as you do] when I noticed a huge double arched flare form over the AR in the West. It didn't last long and quickly faded into oddly shaped streaks of white.

Am I allowed to point out that a W10 machine would make your imaging life so much easier. 😇 Using an "interpreter" to [badly] run well proven software is just being contrary. IMO. We promise not to tell if you can break away from the Apple Cult. Though we cannot guarantee that the MIBs wont come looking for you. 😏

Superb detail! What's this about needing time to process? I process "live" while I am capturing 500 frame AVIs. 2 minutes tops? AS!3 + ImPPG + PhotoFiltre7. What do you mean it shows?!!? 🤣