Sun H-Alpha 25.03.16 11 a.m

[Macavity]

Spent two hours trying to get rotator and TILTER to center sweet spot.
Gave up (short cut to insanity?) - Back to *firmly* clamping diagonal!

Have a square at RHS of chip where tuning is acceptable. Drift technique
gets rid of Newts Rings, but Sun moves into bad area and image suffers!
I either need a way to slow (not stop) tracking... or a faster frame rate? 

Compromised by trying a L-R "mosaic". Now GIMP driving me nuts...
No idea why the orientation is wrong? And yes, you can see the join! 

Otherwise, must grumble etc. etc.

 

[sooot]

still a nice shot after your troubles

[lunator]

Chris

Despite your tribulations you have got some good detail in the pics

Cheers

Ian

[laudropb]

Still very nice disks and proms.

[Davey-T]

Looking good Chris, at least you've only got one join you could play noughts and crosses on my recent effort 

Dave

[xtreemchaos]

great image Chris,loads of lovely dynamic detail. thanks,  charl.

[David Smith]

Keep plugging away Chris, you'll get there in the end! Nice detail in that disk.

[Pete Presland]

Nice disc despite the conditions and problems. 

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice disk despite the seam. Good capture of that beautiful prom

[DrRobin]

Apart from the join, that is a nice pic, plenty of detail and nicely flat.  I bought a tilt adapter, fiddled with it at great length and finally decided that the camera needed to be tilted so much the rest of the image suffered.  My mount usually drifts a bit and flats in Firecapture take care of the rest of the Newton rings.  Plus, my ASI174 is much better than my older ASI120, now used for my Lunt or night time RGB on the planets.

Robin

[Macavity]

In the cold light of day (notwithstanding British Phlegm, understatement, false modesty etc.)
it's "none to shabby" really? In ALL areas of Astro image processing I have a bit to learn too!  
To echo Robin's experience, I frankly didn't derive much benefit from the TILTER experience. 
I too get the impression, to be useful (re. sweet spot or NRs) the required tilt is (too) large?

Re. the Lunt LS50THa generally, I am happy enough! The "best" image (Sweet spot?) has a
lateral shift from the exact center of the (quite small) chip? But at least it seems reproducible. 
It seems common enough to work around this with mosaic techniques if needed... I may still
try the rotator + a simple female-female T2 adapter...  rather than *clamping* nose-piece!

Heheh. I usually RELY on my trusty HEQ5 to inject enough tracking error to fix most things!
But perhaps not sufficient this time? Stopping the tracking certainly fixes my (modest) NRs.
As I say, it causes the Sun to drift into the "less good" area of the chip! In fairness though,
my "Solar PC" - A Samsung NC10, delivers a commendable 18 f.p.s. but could be bettered!

Still intrigued re. the possibility of slowing (not stopping) tracking my HEQ5??? I have yet
to make notable progress (It have tried) with H-Alpha FLAT production, but who knows...

As ever, Thanks Folks! A FUN new field of Astronomy! If not quite "off the peg" (As Ever)? 

[Davey-T]

Has it got a selection of tracking rates ? ie solar , lunar sidereal, you could experiment with.

Tried running my mount in ALT / AZ  while in EQ mode, certainly makes it drift, but it got really confused

Dave

[paulastro]

All this is far too technical for me (single frame snapper), but I love the image anyway. 

[Macavity]

*EQMOD* certainly does have a variety of presets rates (Siderial, Lunar, Solar) and CUSTOM!
Just asked the question and got an immediate response from the man (Chrisshillito) himself...
See SGL section Discussion - Mounts. 

So YES, I can apparently change the tracking rate via the display text boxes. The standard
RA value (siderial tracking) is 15.041067 arc sec per second. But change that appropriately,
and presto I can seemingly drift the sun back / forwards / wherever on the chip!

At the moment, it is raining (of course), so this only on the CdC simulation screen! But I have
great hopes for this. My NRs are fairly faint. I speculate I can reduce them with small(er) drift?
But if this works "all my problems are over"? (The Astro ones anyway!) lol