Saturdays Solar Selection Box - 6th April

[markt]

For once Saturday dawned with clear blue skies - good transparency and good seeing first thing, so the only thing to do in such situations is to get out and get observing!

Starting off with the white light overview, this was taken with the 100mm Tal refractor using focal reducer to take me down to f6(ish), Lunt solar wedge and baader continuum filter:

wl by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Then switching to CaK, I do like the 100mm @ f6 compared to the 70mm I usually use in terms of how much more detail it pulls out, however the extra aperture means seeing becomes more of an issue, and this was the case yesterday afternoon when only 4 of 6 panels were decent, as a result, a near full disk...

CaK bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

cak colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Then, switching back to 656nm it was time for some Ha, first off the full disk with the 70mm PST mod @ ~800mm fl. Camera used throughout was the DMK31.

ha full disk bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

ha full disk colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Then time for the first run for the 5" PST mod this year...

564608_10151829514017067_1497184154_n (2) by Mark Townley, on Flickr

I wanted to do a hi-res mosaic of AR11711; this was taken at 2 metre focal length.

AR11711 mosaic bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

AR11711 mosaic colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

All of the images above are alot larger in orginal form, and so definitely worth following the link through on Flickr for the full resolution versions, there's quite a bit more detail than visible here. Here's a crop from the mosaic above...

AR11711 upclose colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

I have a bit more data to plough through, i'm hoping to have an animation of the region that threw out the M class flare on friday evening, as that seemed a rather 'turbulent' area yesterday.

Hope you like these, and hope the sun is shining for you!

Mark

[David Smith]

Wow Mark! Some impressive pics and an impressive PST Mod as well.

[Bizibilder]

Superb images Mark, well done.

[Mark at Beaufort]

Fantastic solar images Mark. How long have you had the Lunt Herschel Wedge and how much better is it than the normal white light filter? Do you need the polarising filter as well as the Continuum filter?

Mark

[markt]

Thanks guys!

I've had the Lunt wedge now for just over 2 years, I find it offers improved contrast over the solar film, but it does cost quite a bit more. I would recommend one. You really start to see the improvement in high end triplet refractors - take for instance Alexandras (Montanas) uber fine white light shots - I can't get that close in my cheapo achros. I didn't use a polarising filter when i took the images with it above, but it is handy for visual work.

Here's a couple more images that came out ok too, taken with the 100mm Tal refractor at 2000mm focal length:

ar11711 wl by Mark Townley, on Flickr

ar11711 cak bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

ar11711 cak colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Mark

[DrRobin]

Stunning Mark!

Robin

[sologuitarist61]

Superb detail - superb set of images!

[Montana]

Wow wow and wow! all of them are stunning and look great presented here in large

Alexandra

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Stunning detail. I agree on the Lunt wedge, I got one for my birthday this year, and it is much better than solar film.