Hughsie

AR12824 continues to live up to the name of an ‘Active Region’ putting on a good show and is now positioned nicely on the solar disc. AR12825 is quietly doing its thing. Weather continues to be poor and shortly after this run of images the clouds took up their usual position. Looking outside this morning (25 May) there doesn’t look to be any break in the clouds but good weather appears to be around the corner and hopefully some longer clear spells. Below are a full disc, x3 of AR12824 and x5 AR12824.

Welcome to the light side Bob.

Great to see you back in action Charl. Pants weather here this week but I was lucky last, so I am really pleased you are getting your eye in again.

Thank you Sunshine

Viewing the Sun this morning reminded me of the 1981 hit by Soft Cell; Say Hello, Wave Goodbye as AR12824 comes into view and AR12822 slowly disappears around the western limb. Images captured with the Lunt 60mm THa/CPT with B1200 filter, ZWO ASI174mm and SkyWatcher EQ6R-Pro. A 3x barlow was used for the closer views taken through a rising mist of water vapour rising off the garden fence after last nights deluge and the heat from the morning Sun. 1,000 frames with 25% being stacked in Autostakkert 3 with flats then squeezed, kneaded and thrashed about in ImPPG and PixInsight.

I’m looking on the bright side. It Will Be Cloudy

AR12822 and AR12823 continue their trek across the disc of the Sun whilst I sit below trying to achieve something akin to focus on my laptop screen. One day someone is going to look over my garden fence and see someone hunched over with their head inside a box, one hand on a focus knob with a black sheet completely obscuring my head and torso. I wonder what they will make of it all....

Great to see you join the light side of things. Just an observation on the setup, is that a battery pack you have the Quark plugged in to? If it is, why not switch to a solar powered one after all, the Sun must be out when your Quark is 🌞 and your reduced carbon footprint will offset my polluting diesel 4x4 😂

Various areas of interest on the Sun today. AR12822 and AR12823 plus a nice prom near 12823. Lunt 60mm THa/B1200CPT, ZWO ASI174mm, EQ6R Pro and a 2.5x/5x Powermate plus a 3x barlow to add to the mix.

Full disc at 2.5x AR12822 and further active region at 5x Taken with Lunt 60mm THa/B1200 filter; ZWO ASI174mm with Tele Vue 2.5x and 5x Powermate. Usual 25% of 1,000 frames captured, stacked in AuutoStakkert 3 and processed with Imppg and PixInsight.

Usually I get to see active regions as they are departing so fingers crossed a change is on the way with a possible active region coming around the eastern limb. There is also some plage visible and some nice prominences as well. Apologies for lots of images, there is probably something for everyone, whether you like colour, inverted or just plain greyscale images. Equipment & Software Lunt 60mm THa/B1200 filter solar scope pointed up. ZWO ASI174mm camera, switched on. SkyWatcher EQ6R-Pro mount vaguely polar aligned. Tele Vue 2.5x and 5x Powermate with dust caps off. Acquired with SharpCap Pro. Piled up in AutoStakkert 3. Inverted images twisted and turned in ImPPG. Final images passed through the PixInsight sausage machine. Data 25% of 1,000 images across various exposures and gains with a poor attempt at capturing flats through a plastic sandwich bag. Thank you for checking in. John

I managed to capture three images of the Sun this evening in between rain, clouds and a wait for the Sun to clear the roof of my neighbours house. No sooner had I started to get the image orientation right when more clouds drifted across the Sun and I was left to capture a quick set of 1,000 frames between gaps in thick cloud then quickly pack up as further rain looked possible. Here is the best of a bad bunch. The usual 25% of 1,000 frames stacked and butchered in PixInsight. No colour added as without flat frames it looked awful. Grey covers a multitude of sins. Captured with my Lunt 60mmTHa/B1200 blocking filter, ZWO ASI 174mm mounted on my EQ6R-Pro. Images acquired using SharpCap, 3.5ms exposure time with zero gain and probably packed away quicker than the exposure time Thanks for dropping by. John

All very quiet on the solar disc this morning, only a small filament worthy of note near the south west limb. Equipment Lunt 60mm & 1200 Blocking filter. ZWO ASI174mm camera. SkyWatcher EQ6R- Pro mount. Ser files acquired with SharpCap Pro. 5x Tele Vue Powermate for filament image. Data Full disc - Exposure time 3.5 ms, Gain = 0 Filament - Exposure time 35 ms, Gain = 100 Best 25% out of 1,000 frames stacked with flats in Autostakkert and processed in PixInsight. Thanks for stopping by.

Some images from 1 May 2021 in RGB and greyscale. Still haven’t found a ‘presentation’ that I like for my images but I will get there. Here is ‘goodbye’ to AR12821, AR12818, AR12820 as they disappear around the limb, a full disc and a close up of an area said to be the location of a sigmoid but obviously not visible in Ha. Taken with; Lunt 60mm & B1200 blocking filter. ZWO ASI174mm Skywatcher Solar Quest mount. Best 25% of 1,000 frames stacked in Autostakkert with flats and processed using PixInsight. Thank you for checking in. John

No idea Michael. I have since used the ASI290mm mini with my WOZ103 and had no issues at all so I can assume the guide camera is in working order. I made two adjustments, first switched out the 290 for the Lodestar which is a more sensitive camera and the second was I increased the ’auto guider’ settle settings from 0.5 px to 1 px and all is working. TBH I have been getting frustrated with SGPro recently. It seems with the latest version its a bit of a lottery each time I image as to what will fail for no obvious reason and only a few days ago it simply failed to open on my laptop when a week before it worked fine and nothing had changed in-between. I had to resort to reinstalling a backup copy of my SSD and I then downloaded a previous version of SGPro and it is now playing ball.

Simply fantastic!

Welcome to the bright side.

If like me the weather means you haven’t got any data to work with try the Iki Observatory page here on SGL. They have made available integrated masters that could offer some great opportunities to get to know PI better both in RGB and narrowband.

Second that. I have both Warren Keller’s Inside PixInsight and Rogello Andreo Mastering PixInsight and find the latter to be much easier to follow. I know from the PixInsight for Beginners facebook page that RA was initially having some delivery issues with his book but that was the middle of last year. His PDF is just as good plus he was offering a discount to the book if you had already purchased the pdf version. BTW, if you are on Facebook it may be worth joining the PixInsight for Beginners page. Rogello, Warren, Adam Block and Ron Brecher are all on there too and do provide a lot of guidance in amongst promoting the courses they run.

Thankfully I clone my Astro Laptop SSD regularly for just these special occasions. Back in business again.

Backed up then deleted the config and profile files I could see but no change

Thank you. Sadly there is not a ‘AppData’ or ‘Local’ folder there.

I am using v3.2.0.660

I have SGPro installed on a Windows 10 laptop and have been quite happily using it for the last two years. The current version of SGPro is installed and last week it worked fine. Tonight with clear a clear sky in the offing I fired everything up and found that SGP does simply not want to work. No error messages or warnings. I just double click on the programme icon, I get the blue circle rotating then stops. All my other programmes work as expected. Anyone out there have a similar issue or aware of this problem and how it may be resolved? The SGP forum is quiet on the matter. John

Been wondering what to write here because my first thought would be to upgrade the mount as having a solid base with good tracking is essential, even more so when using a 6 inch SCT. Then I look a your image and the question that comes to mind is ‘are you happy with it?’. I ask that because its a great photo with the equipment you have so why change at this time especially when gear looks expensive and is typically hard to find. You may be thinking about a new scope and as you have more free time and hopefully some clear skies in the Summer then as its nebula season you my want to go down the wide field route with 50, 60 or 70 mm aperture being an option. William Optics offer a lot of good optics in this size though the 50 and 70 mm options would be outside budget plus all three may require added extras like a flattener or smaller guidescope. Right now, I would enjoy what you have and save up for that mount. Having a good work horse in the stable that is is going to cover some future scope purchases will be a great investment.