January 12, 2013: First light of ASI130MM on sun in H-alpha

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I have just been able to snap my first solar disks in H-alpha. Still some work to be done (flats, etc), but pretty chuffed about these results.

Tonight I hope to get Jupiter

[Steve Ward]

Good to see you catching some rays . . .

Sitting under the grey waiting for the slimmest of gaps here , not looking hopeful though . .

Steve.

[DrRobin]

Nice one Michael. I managed about 5 minutes between cloud just long enough for 2000 frames for the surface and 500 frames for the proms. I am still stacking the images........

[Montana]

Congratulations!! these are fabulous

Alexandra

[KE400]

Nice capture Michael, nice colours too

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Thanks everybody! I have been playing with gradient removal a bit, and this is an interim result. Still more work to be done, as I applied the gradient to prominences and surface alike, which is not quite correct.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Some further tweaking of gradients gets me this:

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

And now with some sharpening added

[DrRobin]

A lot more detail is visible in your last picture, so well worth the effort of reprocessing. I used to spend ages fiddling around trying to find out what works and then once I got it right I just use pretty much the same settings each time.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

A lot more detail is visible in your last picture, so well worth the effort of reprocessing. I used to spend ages fiddling around trying to find out what works and then once I got it right I just use pretty much the same settings each time.

Thanks!

It does help that I teach image processing at the university

[KE400]

Looking good Michael, think you will have to start giving us a few processing lessons at this rate!

The last images are really good, I really like the colouring and you have teased out some great detail too.

Congrats

[JamesF]

Those last images do look good. Is the banding at the top and bottom an artefact of the camera?

James

[Mark at Beaufort]

These are great solar photos Michael. You must be really pleased with your Lunt.

Mark

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Those last images do look good. Is the banding at the top and bottom an artefact of the camera?

James

You are right about the background, that is an artefact. I have made an effort to sort that out, by selecting a section of the image to the right of the sun, which shows only background, stretching that to 1280x1024, and subtracting it from the original. That removes most of it. All this I did in grey scale, and then remapped to the same colour profile as before. I also added just a bit more sharpening in gimp. Results are better, I think.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

These are great solar photos Michael. You must be really pleased with your Lunt.

Mark

Cheers Mark,

I am well pleased with both the Lunt and the ASI130

[sammy1075]

cool pics

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

cool pics

Thanks!