The Sun - 15th Feb 2012

[David Smith]

Saw the Sun for the first time in a while yesterday and unlike Thursday, it stuck around long enough for me to get some images.

First up the usual white light image. 53 from 91 @ 1/1250th second on ISO 100. Stacked and stretched in R5.1 and then coloured etc in GIMP2.8..

20130215 by David_The_Bears_Fan, on Flickr

After that I got the PST out which is usually the signal for the clouds to move back in! They did eventually but I did get half an hour in before so. I have been trying to figure out imaging with this scope off and on for a while now, I have an old Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000 webcam which I have never used much. I bought a proper adaptor for it a few weeks back but this is only the second chance I have had to be able to use it. Took a couple of avi's before the clouds came in and the following are the stacked results. I am using AS2 as R5.1 cannot open the avi files generated using wxastrocapture. I have not done anything in terms of post processing so if anyone has any suggestions they would be welcomed.

Ha Prom II_20130215_1152_40_g3_b3_ap79 by David_The_Bears_Fan, on Flickr

Ha Prom_20130215_1200_30_g3_b3_ap1 by David_The_Bears_Fan, on Flickr

I am quite please with what I have got here as this is probably the first time I have something reasonably clear and recognisable! It's a long slow learning process imaging, made longer and slower by the weather as I forget what I have learned in the two week gaps between observing sessions!

[DrRobin]

Looking good David, the proms are nice. Did you take two pictures one for the proms and one for the surface detail?

If you did, it looks like you over exposed slightly on the surface and it has lost detail as the camera saturated. It is all practise.

Robin

[David Smith]

Thanks Robin. No, was just a single avi for each picture hence the over exposure. Clouds came in before I had time to play with the exposure time to get good surface detail. According to the forecast it should be clear later in which case I should have chance to have another go! I made sure I noted all the settings for the camera yesterday so should be able to get going quicker next time.

[Steve Ward]

Good to see you back in action ,

Sunny days are a bit of a rarity at present.

[Montana]

Brilliant white light pity there is only one spot at the moment, but the prominences are fantastic, you can see lots of detail

Alexandra