First White Light Sun

[The Admiral]

I've just got a Baader solar filter for my 'scope, and as it was nice and sunny first thing this morning I thought I'd have a go at getting some images. I managed to get two sets of about 70 each before the clouds rolled in, using the continuous mode of my camera, for each set. Compared to night time imaging, I found the focusing to be very difficult as there are no really sharp objects to focus on, and the effects of the heat currents added to the difficulty. My first set was rather better in that regard than the second set, as I tried to re-focus between sets. Any advice welcome from the "Masters" (you know who you are ).

I processed each set in Autostakkert, fiddled around with wavelets in Registax (that was a bit of a nightmare!), and finished off in Picture Window Pro. Details: Altair Wave 102mm f7 SuperED APO, Fuji X-T1, Nexstar 6/8SE alt-az mount. 22nd March 2016.

 

Ian

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Very good first disk! You seem to have nailed focus perfectly, despite the difficulties. I tend to use ImPPG for sharpening by deconvolution and unsharp masking. Less f a faff than RS6

[Starlight 1]

That looking very good Ian.

[The Admiral]

Thanks both for your kind comments.

I tried reprocessing the image, but try as I might I wasn't able to reproduce it. The more I tried to enhance the granularity, the more I got a bright border around the periphery.

Ian

[glowingturnip]

bright border round the periphery (white ringing) is a classic artifact of over-sharpening, you've done well to pull back from that temptation  :-)

[Astrosurf]

Excellent shot and focusing!

Alexxx

[The Admiral]

Thanks all. At risk of labouring this, I've had another go at post-processing this image. Instead of (trying and) using wavelets in Registax, I've taken the output of Autostakkert and used a combination of curves and sharpening in both Picture Window Pro and Lightroom. I prefer the output from Lightroom here. I can now see granulation over the whole disk, whereas originally it faded to a uniform featureless tone at the periphery.

I think I'll leave it alone now

Ian