Sun in white light

[ardbeg74]

Baader solar film arrived during the week and I got some time today to make the filter cell. Armed with an assortment of cardboard, glue, packing tape and double sided sticky tape i set too. Organised chaos at the dining room table but the end result. One snug fitting, sturdy, full aperture solar filter. And it was sunny outside to boot.

One thing i did forget though, laptop screens are hard to see in sunshine. So i stuck the laptop in a large cardboard box and stuck my head in there too, which made focusing pretty awkward.  Some sort of telescope screen required i think

I had been curious about how to get aligned properly, but found a great tip online, use the shadow of the telescope as a guide. Shortest shadow is pretty much bang on. Sure enough it works a treat.

I did take a run of 30 subs at various iso / exposures... pic posted is 1 sub @ iso 100 1/1200 sec. But i had a little problem when i tried to stack in AS!2. It crops the image to 2400x2400. Im not sure if reducing the image size before hand is a good idea. Is there any other free software which will handle large images or should i just go ahead and reduce the image?

Cheers

Mark

[David Smith]

That's a good start, welcome to the light side

Could try Registax for stacking, works well for me. Tutorial here by one of SGL's own.

[ardbeg74]

Thanks for the tutorial David. I'll have a read after dinner.

Sure was a strange experience seeing my garden in the daytime

Cheers

Mark

[David Smith]

No problem. Look forward to seeing your images. Have a look at the solar imaging section too all those who post there will be more than happy to help / guide.

[Steve Ward]

That's a great starter , welcome to the "light-side" .... 

I would advise using Reg V5.1 for your stacking , by far the best for single frame stacking , V6 can work well as long as everything is to it's liking which is a rare event unfortunately.

Roger's tutorial is a great starting point as David said , look forward to seeing many more from you over in the Solar imaging section very soon ....   

[ardbeg74]

Chucking it down all day today, i hope the summer isnt over yet  Worked  through Rogers tutorial after dinner tonight. Had a lot of fun with this though registax 5 was being a bit temperamental and throwing out of memory and floating point errors. But i was throwing tiffs at it. Though it was fine with jpg's. Stacking worked well, ive never used the ROI feature before so that was good to learn too.

Thanks again guys, see you on the solar section.

Cheers

Mark

[Bizibilder]

That's a really good image - and well processed second time around!  Modesty forbids me to comment on the excellence ease of use of the tutorial    !!

Seriously - let me know if there are any problems or issues following the tutorial and I will try to sort them out.

[ardbeg74]

Hi Roger,

Its an excellent tutorial mate, very easy to follow and im chuffed with the results. Nice colour scheme too, feels very natural unlike my previous attempts

Appreciate the time you put into it, just another reason why the SGL community is so special.

Cheers

Mark

[David Smith]

Cracking second image and I love the presentation. Well done.