The sun again, mostly

[Sam]

Here's the sun from today. You may notice a small piece missing..... unfortunately I didn't cover the disk enough with the four frames. Anyway what I was trying to do was use flats to get rid of the dust bunnies and the newtons rings. A big thanks to DrRobin for suggesting FireCapture and using flats , I think both worked well. Well flats certainly do and now I have my head around firecapture I think that will be very useful as well - especially the extra control it gives over the QHY5. In looking for instruction on creating and using flats I got some tips on false colouring, so this image has a bit of colour. As for the sun, very nice and hot today, loving summer before having to go back to work.

[Pete Presland]

Very nice mosaic, how did you use flats with Firecapture?

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice mosaic. I always capture some flats as well (usually by defocusing the scope, taking 1500 frames, and stacking with AS!2). It really helps matching the boundaries seamlessly when making a mosaic.

[Luke]

Very nice, Sam, a ton of detail showing through. Enjoy the Summer Sun!

[sooot]

Very nice smoothly processed not overdone

[David Smith]

Great image Sam.

[DrRobin]

That was quick Sam, well done on getting a great capture and getting use to Firecapture. I haven't actually tried flats within Firecapture, just saw it was capable, but did use them in Autostakkert as suggest by Michael. I think Firecapture uses the flats as it takes each frame, which should give you good frame subtraction, but you will need to take them first and if you are like me, you see something good and want to get it on film before it goes.

To take a flat you can defocus and optionally move the frame around a bit to even out any bright spots on the sun or use a supermarket white plastic bag over the front to diffuse the image. I used to use a piece of drafting film (posh name for tracing paper) but it cuts out a lot of the light and my exposure times were really long.

I don't often use a flat these days for solar, my white light rig doesn't need them, neither does my Lunt 60 with a 1.5x Barlow. I might however, give them a try with my Quark, it has a fairly uneven field.

Make the most of the sunny weather and the holidays.

Robin

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I found a plastic bag took away WAY too much light in my little LS35. Defocus works best for me. Might try the flats within FireCapture next time

[Sam]

Thanks for the feedback, I took the avi for the flat with Fire Capture and used the create flat feature in Registax and load flat for the processing of the sun avi. Robin, thanks for the tip about moving the sun around a bit to even out the bright spots, I'll do that today.

[Montana]

A very nice image, you just need to use a little cloning in Photoshop to remove the black wedge :)

Alexandra

[PeterW]

..... Or tell people that the little black bit is the tail of plane that has just crossed the sun...!

Cheers

PeterW

[Stardust]

Nice mosiac, just getting the hang of these myself. I don't use flats but will check them out. This is the great thing about posting and picking up hints & tips along the way. A little mention of a technique here and there makes you search around and hopefully improve things as I go.

[Sam]

Nice mosiac, just getting the hang of these myself. I don't use flats but will check them out. This is the great thing about posting and picking up hints & tips along the way. A little mention of a technique here and there makes you search around and hopefully improve things as I go.

Very true!