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Showing results for tags 'solar'.
Found 118 results
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COMPLETED - SOLD - Daystar Quark (Chromosphere) - MINT in box
Owmuchonomy posted a topic in Sold / Expired Classified Ads
For sale is my Daystar Quark, Chromosphere version. It has had infrequent use and I can't justify keeping it. Works superbly with my ED80. It was purchased in July 2017 from Widescreen Centre so is still well within the 5 year warranty period. I am looking for £625 posted to a UK mainland address. Everything is complete in the box including instructions, USB cable and power adaptor. Payment by bank transfer please. -
solar William Optics Z103 & Daystar Quark Chromosphere
Hughsie posted a topic in Discussions - Scopes / Whole setups
Last summer I spent a lot of time observing and imaging the sun with a WO Z61 and Quark Chromosphere. Recently I have acquired a WO Z103 and if the sun ever comes out I would like to use this refractor for imaging as well. Question I have is with the wider aperture of the Z103, is it safe to use with the Quark and is an energy rejection filter needed? I previously read that it should be ok up to c100mm without an ERF but I cannot see any reference to this on now on the Daystar website. Thoughts welcome. -
Hi, I currently have a Lunt 50THa and I am looking for something showing more detail and contrast on the sun's surface. I have been considering the new Meade SolarMax III 70 Double Stack, the Lunt 60 with DS (fairly expensive in comparison) and now stumbled across the Daystar Chromosphere. My key considerations: - I love that I can just take out the Lunt at lunch time, put it on a photographic tripod, and I am up and running in about 5min. - When travelling, it would be easier to have one telescope to take with me for day and night use - Cost is certainly an aspect - I do not want to spend more than about 3000 pounds. May I get your input on a couple of assumptions I am making (and which may be completely wrong - sorry, I am not a telescope expert, I just love using them...) - The only purpose of double stacking is to get a narrower bandwidth using (cheaper) filters with a wider bandwidth - by using two 0.7nm filters tuned to slightly different bandwidth the Lunt and the Coronado achieve 0.5nm effective transmission. - A Daystar Chromosphere with a transmission of <= 0.5nm will hence show me the same detail as a Lunt or Coronado Double Stack with a single Etalon - A refractor up to 80mm does not require an additional ERF - A relatively cheap achromat will do - as I am only observing at a single wavelength, the correction for multiple wavelengths really does not make a difference (at least for H alpha) So on that background I guess an 80mm refractor with the DayStar will give me a really good solution am I right? Best Thomas
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Hello from Florida, I wasn't able to image the 4th and final day as AR2729 rounded the limb due to work, but I was able to latch on for three days while it had lovely visible umbra. This is spanning December 5th, 6th and 7th. Imaged in 6562.8A wavelength. B&W: Colored: Captured with: Celestron 150mm F8 Refractor (CR150HD) Daystar 150mm ERF Daystar Quark Chromosphere ASI174MM Camera with 2" GSO 0.5x Focal Reducer Very best,
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I am thinking of getting a Lunt 50mm scope. I want to image as well as observe. I am thinking I could put my ZWO on the scope and capture video. My question is, does focal length in a solar scope relate to the FoV as it does for a non-solar scope? The field of view calculator (http://www.12dstring.me.uk/fovcalc.php) suggests I could just about get a full disc with a focal length of 350mm (the 50mm Lunt), but not with a focal length of 500mm (the 60mm Lunt). Is my logic correct?
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So, I am going to take my first steps into observing and hopefully imaging the sun, and get myself a filter for the telescope, just so that I have something to do, when I am working nightshifts, or the weather is bad at night. From what I can see, all I would need is a filter like this one https://www.firstlightoptics.com/solar-filters/astrozap-baader-solar-filter.html. Is that so, or is there anything else that you would highly recommend that I get, and why? My telescope is a Skywatcher 150PDS on a Celestron AVX mount. On the same time, I am looking at buying a baader hydrogen alpha 3mm filter for imaging. Is this also something I could use for observing, or it is solely for imaging? Just curious. Any comments, tips, advice would be very much appreciated, as I would rather not damage either my eyes, or more importantly my equipment! (jk)
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Just caught up with The Sky at Night from Sunday 12th Aug. Subject Coronal Mass Ejections from the Sun. Must admit I am slightly disappointed, if I am even allowed to criticise such a National Instution. First, the episode subtitle, "Death Star" . . . Groan. Then the intro from Maggie A-P included the statement that a CME's "could devastate our technological world . . " She said something similar at the end. IMHO neither statement was backed up by the rest of the episode. The boffins suggested some unquantified damage to power grids & satellites "which might have hardening or redundancies" So I was left with the impression of some Millenium Bug style media hype. Would definitley be great aurorae though. What do you think?
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I pointed my solar telescope at a small prominence in the hope that it would do something whilst I imaged it. Because I am new to solar imaging I don't know whether this is particularly lucky, or if it's something that's easily caught. Over the space of about an hour I captured 18 videos, each of 1000 frames, using a mono DMK21. I stacked 10% of the frames, and then manually went about aligning and cropping the 18 stacked images because ImPPG didn't like to do it for me. I also took an image of the solar surface, just to get rid of the white in the image, and add something visually interesting to the solar disc. I used a curves adjustment to make it orange, and then made a movie in MS Movie Maker. Hope you enjoy it! solar_prominences_long.mp4
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After opinions please ... I have a C8 that I use for planetary imaging / visual and a 250 px Dob for DSO visual . I haven't touched the Dob for what seems like forever and keep using the C8 more and more . I have about £300 Christmas / birthday money and keep thinking about selling the Dob to maybe fund something like a Lunt 35 or 60 second hand to throw on the AVX ? Have any of you been through this process and were you happy ? Cheers for reading
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Here's an attempt from today. I was blessed with clear skies almost all day so tried my hand. This is using a Skywatcher st80 80mm f/4.5 with omegon t2F-m48M adapter and then the quark screwed down tight to the end. I am try8ing to get to the level of detail seen here in others. These images are 20 secs between 70 and 100 fps using firecapture and a ZWL120 mono. Focusing is as good as I can make it by hand. There's still a few dust spots left but other than that, any tips? Active region Large prominence Mike
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Hi guys, I wanted to share with you a detail of an AR I captured with my modest setup some days ago. Nothing fancy or special, but it is the first time I have managed to get such level of detail, so I'm happy with it. Setup SW 114/900 Newton on EQ2, motor focusing Prestigio PWC2 webcam, IR-cut filter, Baader Astrosolar, Hyperion Zoom Barlow 2.25x Enjoy.
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The Great American Eclipse!
orion25 posted a topic in Imaging - Widefield, Special Events and Comets
Greetings, all. I was fortunate enough to be able to comfortably drive to a location in the path of totality for the Great American Eclipse which happens to be the Cherokee Indian Reservation in North Carolina. The wide-field images were shot using a fully-zoomed 50-300mm lens attached to a Nikon D3200; the tighter images were shot through my 127mm Mak using a Nikon D50. I had to remember to abandon all filters during totality - and, of course - to just look up! Truly, a life-changing event. -
Managed to grab some H Alpha and Ca-K data whilst out this morning. Pretty windy at times so quite (pleasantly) surprised how well these have come out. Proms in Ha & Ca-K 6 Pane Ca-K full disk AR12490 @ 2000mm focal length.
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Hi all Really really struggled to get this working in photoshop. I think I've screwed up the exposure on the prom capture so the disc ended up being a fair size larger than the surface detail which was always going to give me a bit of a halo around the image. Hope its not too bad but comments and advice are always welcome Taken with the Coronado Solarmax SS60 and PGR Grasshopper today, 700 frames proms, 1000 surface. Not much happening today when I took this which is a shame because I've just seen some cracking pictures of looping proms from yesterday! Clear skies all Cheers Will
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While the solar observing specs are on back-order I decided to have a go at making some binocular solar film filters, so ordered an A4 sheet of the Baader solar film and downloaded the Baader instructions. While the translation may have lost out on one or two small things it was very easy to follow the guide to build my own objective filters using the film and some white card. The view through them is better than I had imagined, there is some granularity visible (like a gradient around the edges of the sun giving it a spherical appearance) and right now I could see three large areas of sunspot activity. The colour is white as advertised, with shades of grey and black. I could just make out the branches of a tree that were close to the sun, probably just their shadow I could see as they blocked some of the sun's energy. As per the instructions, I held both filters up to the bright daylight to check for any pin [removed word] holes before using them with the binoculars. They are a snug fit for sure, no chance of them coming off once they are firmly pushed on. [can't believe the profanity filter removed a word meaning to make a small hole with a pin!] These fit my 8x42 Bushnells, I'm sure a larger pair of binoculars would show an even better view. I may attempt to make one for my 102 refractor with the remaining portion of the A4 sheet. All I need now is a safe piece of tupperware to carefully store these in. Would be interested to see what others have made with solar film.
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Here's my white light result from May 26th. Looks like another small spot rotating into view close to the eastern limb.
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My first attempt at photographing a Transit and I decided to try for the 2nd and 3rd Contacts, but of course as those in the UK will know, the final phase of the Mercury Transit was clouded out. So, here's my attempt to capture "2nd Contact" using a Canon 600D (unmodded) at eyepiece projection with a Baader Hyperion 17mm, Baader Solar Continuum filter, Lunt Herschel Wedge and a Skywatcher ED80 DS Pro on a HEQ5:
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Hope this is the right place for my post So with the 9th of May approaching I want to try the following add a solar filter to my Skywatcher Explorer 250 Add a camera instead of the eyepiece and then via the laptop project onto a flat screen in the club house so members of the public can see it in total saftey So a few questions 1 - so the skywatcher cover has the removable 2 inch cap and reading online it seems for the sun this is the best approach, leave the cover on and have a filter over the smaller hole - can I buy a premade cover for the 2 inch hole 2 - Cameras - I have a choice of QHY5, QHY5 II or an oldder Philips Webcam spc900nc - any thought on which would be the best to use ? 3 - What software would be most appropriate for this project Thanks in advance John B
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Here's a 10 frame animation. 1 frame per minute. It shows the movement of this large prominence over a very short time frame. A full frame shot to show the relative size of this huge prominence. And another shot with a black dot that shows the relative size of the Earth. Tech Details: Lunt 80mm Ha telescope, ZWO ASI1600mm cooled camera. Processed in AutoStakkert!2 and ImPPG, colorized and layered in PhotoshopCC.
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I've been using a Quark chromosphere now since May and just wanted to share what an absolute delight this piece of equipment is (albeit I never seem to have enough cloud free sky to get it right on band). I had been using a ST80 but felt this was lacking and not a great match for the Quark in terms of focal length. I've since moved to a 120mm refractor and hope the images show how capable the Quark is.
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Perhaps the most interesting and curious archaeological object related to astronomy is the Antikythera mechanism. It was discovered a little over 100 years ago in 2nd century B.C. shipwreck near the Greek island of Antikythera and is now in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. After more than 2,000 years on the seabed, it is obviously in poor condition and badly damaged. However a variety of complex imaging techniques have begun to unravel its secrets. It is a very sophisticated mechanical "computer" to calculate the cycles of the Solar System. For an overview, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism And for more detail: http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/ For me, the most fascinating aspect of this unique surviving object is that presumably it was not unique in its day. It reveals a level of scientific knowledge and technology which may have been available at least in the eastern Mediterranean.
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I've made a pinhole projector out of a carpet roll tube which is about 8' long. I made a small window in the bottom end, added the white platform for the projection in the bottom, and covered the top with a small patch of tin foil with a hole in it. I have tried pointing it at the sun so that the shadow is at its smallest but I cannot get a projection of the sun on the white plastic surface I put in the bottom, what am I doing wrong? The only thing I can think of is that the projection is too dim and cannot be seen, if that is the case then what is the answer? I'm thinking maybe I need more shade around the viewing window, or maybe I need to use paper instead of white plastic to project onto (can't see why though - white is white). Any pinhole projector experts here who can advise please?
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Here's my take on today's white light disc. Flaring AR11748 is in u/left of disc...
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Solar avi Processing Problems
Barry posted a topic in Imaging - Image Processing, Help and Techniques
Hi I took my first Solar avi's today with a PST and QHY5-II. They were not that good due to intermittent cloud, but I managed a few runs of 1000 to 2000 frames. I have been trying to process them but both Registax and AS2 are falling over during processing. AS2 runs through quite quickly but just hangs at the MAP Recombination stage. The Stack button rehighlights and the system is idle but no file is produced. Registax takes for ever but hangs after the Limit stage. I am running Windows 7 on an i3 laptop. Any ideas? Is it something I am doing or could it be a quality issue with the video. Thanks Barry
