AR11314 15th October

[Montana]

Having a glorious Saturday I tried again to get a good high res image in white light. This time I tried a 1.8ND and managed to get my exposure times less than before. I also tried out Registax 6 and it managed to process my picture. I have more to come hopefully. All taken with a 140mm refractor + Baader Herschel wedge and continuum filter. This one with a 5x Televue Powermate.

AR11314 by Alexandra's Astronomy, on Flickr

Also a few 2x Barlow pictures:2011-10-15 11-25-29 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

2011-10-15 11-23-05 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

2011-10-15 11-28-23 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Thanks for looking.

Alexandra

[Cschur]

Alexandra, I cant believe this image was with a 5x powermate! Your seeing must be amazing. The granulation is totally killer here. I MUST consider one of these wedges!

[Montana]

Thanks Chris! it's not perfect but it's the best I have ever done. If you want to image I would really recommend the Baader Herschel wedge photographic version with all the different ND filters which I have now found essential.

Alexandra

[PeterW]

Interesting that there are some small regions that seem slightly less dead sharp than others, it might be that Registax has had a bit of trouble stacking there. I have seen this on my own and other images. Wonder if tweaking the settings would have an effect (plenty to choose from). You really have got that 140 absolutely firing on all cylinders, the detail is top drawer!! Be interesting to see if the 705 filter would help calm the seeing more and also if you could sneak an even lower ND filter in there?

Can we expect to see some cracking animations soon!?

Cheers

PEterW

[Montana]

Thanks Peter! Yes, Registax doesn't quite do all areas the same but considering Avistack won't even try it is a bonus. I processed this 3 x in Registax each getting different areas more in focus. I then used Photoshop CS5 (courtesy of my work) and blended the best bits together using Layer Mask. I guess I could try a bit harder and Registax more versions concentrating on the fuzzy areas to try and improve it further, I am sure I could but I was more excited to process another (AR11319) which hopefully I will compile tomorrow

I do have 705nm filter and I was also wondering about an even lower ND filter myself. The instructions say to go down to 1.8 but don't mention any lower. Could I damage the camera going lower? that's the only thing I am nervous about. Still plenty to experiment with!

Alexandra

[PeterW]

i tried no filter once and saturated my dmk41 even with 1/2000th second. Doesn't seem to have suffered any harm, still giving me great images. I'd probably keep to 500th or so exposure, very short, but not crazy short. at the shortest exposures i did see some streaky artefacts in the image, but see what you can get away with. I'd probably not leave the scope like this for ages as you still have a decent amount of heat coming in the front that will warm things up, though i'd be surprised if any permanent damage was done.

Keep us posted!

PEter

[smerral]

Umm, I'm seriously thinking about one of these wedges too. That's a cracking shot. Just to clarify, the ND3 filter is for visual, but you have replaced this with the ND1.8 for imaging?

[couleurblue]

Amazing....I would love to be able to get that resolution and animate.

Gordon

[Montana]

Thanks all!

Smerral, I have the Baader Herschel wedge photographic version. It is essential to have a ND3 filter in for visual. However, it comes with 4 different filters for photographic use so you can remove the ND3 and put which ever suits best for imaging. Certainly for prime focus imaging I need at least 2.4 and even at that level I have exposures of around 1/3333 second. For the 5x with the ND1.8 in I was at around 1/120 second so there still is room to improve I think.

Unfortunately the Lunt solar wedge has the ND3 filter permanently fixed and this was one reason why I did not buy their version.

Couleurblue, it was a miracle to get this shot, I think animating would take more than a miracle! I know one person who has done this once and it was the most fantastic animation I have ever seen, but then he gets amazing seeing most of the time.

Alexandra

[smerral]

Thanks for the info Alexandra. I would be imaging with a 80mm refractor. Unfortunately the baader is a bit out of my price range just now. I was thinking of the 1.25 Lunt with appropriate filters...

[Tron]

A baader filters gives that level of detail???? Or is it the wedge giving most of the detail?

Or is it the stacking?

I tried registax 6 with 3 TIF images, takes forever, hangs goes into Not responding and looks like its not working.... I give up on registax and do it manually with layers.

[markt]

Unfortunately the Lunt solar wedge has the ND3 filter permanently fixed and this was one reason why I did not buy their version.

It might be fixed in most Lunt Wedges, but it's not in mine

Just need to get some lower ND filters now...

[PeterW]

Wedges give the best solar view, but need extra neutral density filters to cut down the brightness. You can also add in other filters to limit what colours of light you see, these improve the view as well. Stacking....we take hundreds of images in an avi video file and then let registax do it's magic

On an 18month old PC it will chew through a Gb of data in less than 5mins. I tried to give it image files and had trouble too.

Cheers

Peters

[Cschur]

Alexandra, its all your fault, I just got on the waiting list for a Baader photographic wedge. They cant tell me yet how long, but I know Im number 6 out of 8 coming in on the waiting list! Im trying to absorb everything you do with yours in the mean time and be ready when it arrives. Please keep posting your baader herschel wedge images!

[Tron]

What is the lifetime of one of these wedges, do they degrade over time and/or use?

[Cschur]

Centuries. They still use wedges made for John Herschel back in the 1700s.

[PeterW]

..... Just a bit of glass, no coatings, nothing special. Neutral filters are doped glass and so should last too, but cameras are not so prone to damage as retinas, so you don't need to worry.

Refractor, wedge, filter, DMK, registax, that's about all you need to know, do show us how you get on.

PeterW