Sun 30 Apr WL-Ha-CaK

[sheri_barri]

This weekend certainly has provided a good time to work on backlogged solar images. Not a hint of sunshine!

A variety of perspectives this time taken through white light, CaK and H-alpha. It is interesting how the same features can look so different in another wavelength or even be non existent.

White light - Baader Herschel Wedge on a WO110.

CaK - Baader 1.25" CaK filter used with a Baader mylar filter on a WO110.

H-alpha - Lunt60 Double Stacked.

All imaged with a Skynyx 2.1

Thank you for looking.

Sheri

[billinforres]

Wonderful!!

Bill

[King]

Ah, I see you caught the pin filament as well! Yours turned out much cleaner than mine.

[iwatkins]

Really nice Sheri

Cheers

Ian

[wolfgang.f]

The level of detail you captured is just amazing, especially with your h-alpha shots. There's so much detail in the surface structure and filaments - great!

I was intrigued to see some CaK images, too. Had my eyes on a CaK filter for my setup (ED 80, 6" Mak + Solar film) for some time - would you recommend it?

Thanks, Wolfgang

[sheri_barri]

Hi Wolfgang,

Cheers for your kind comments. So nice that the sun is showing interesting activity lately.

The Baader CaK filter has quite a wide bandwidth of ~80A. This is quite high compared to a PST or similar dedicated instrument giving 2-3A as does the Lunt CaK diagonal although 1/3 the cost. I find it is good for surface detail but not tight enough for prominences in CaK. Since I image primarily surface detail as an interest, this suits me fine. I've got a PST CaK as well but it has not had enough use. Have to see if some images are possible soon to illustrate the difference. The PST is less aperture at 40mm vs the 110mm which I use the Baader filter on (WO110) so there is a tradeoff between aperture and bandpass to be considered as well. The images here were taken with ND5 rather than imaging 3.8 mylar so the features visible can be improved from what are posted here. Just haven't got around to mounting the 3.8 film. An additional advantage with the Baader CaK as it can be used on the clouds of Venus with some success if you are a planetary imager.

Kind regards,

Sheri

[Mark at Beaufort]

Sheri the quality of your images are a delight to view especially in WL,Ha and CaK.

I have only looked through a PST CaK scope on a few occasions and always found it too dark to really appreciate so your CaK images are a bonus.

Mark

[Carbon60]

Really excellent Sheri. Great detail and something for me to aspire to. Makes my attempts look a bit sick. I need more practice and better kit!! PST and webcam just don't cut it.

Stu.

[sheri_barri]

Hi Stu,

The PST can do a lot depending on the quality of the camera. The bandpass of the PST may not be a narrow nor the aperture as large as the more expensive scopes but it will yield a decent result with a higher resolution and faster frame rate camera.

Kind regards,

Sheri

[Carbon60]

Thanks Sheri,

Yes, I've seen some great work with a PST and especially a modified PST. I'm going down the route of modifying my PST and upgrading my camera to try to get someway close to the sort of images that you produce.

I'll post some work on the forum when I get this all up and running. Image processing tips welcome.

Regards

Stuart

[armicheal]

Some really excellent images. I like those long filaments you captured and the detail on the Cak images.

[Beyond_Vision]

A really fantastic set of images Sherri great work as usual

Regards

Kevin

[King]

it will yield a decent result with a higher resolution and faster frame rate camera.

Is 15fps good? People seem to use 10 for planets so I never got in the habit of using anything greater than 15 for the Sun.

[sheri_barri]

15fps is all I can get with the full pixel use (whole disk) using the Skynyx 2.1 USB2. When the pixels are reduced (area of the chip in use is smaller) the fps increases to near 40fps. The 15fps seems to be working okay on the full disk if the seeing conditions are reasonable. Hope this helps.

[beamer3.6m]

The first image is one of the best sun pictures I have seen as there is just so much activity caught in that image.

It keeps your eye drawn to it as you keep finding new things to look at.

Great.

[astroshot]

Very good images Sheri.

Full disc image is excellent.