Sol May 8th - My First Sun!

[sagramore]

Hi everyone. It's been a while since I posted anything here but I was recently away in the countryside and had only clear skies during the day. Fortunately it coincided with the arrival of my new ASI120MC-S and solar filters!

As such, here is my first solar image. It's a 4-panel mosaic with location and acquisition information under the thumbnail. I am really happy with it for my first try and I don't plan on becoming a professional solar imager (the rig is for DSO and the ASI120MC-S is for guiding primarily!) but I would love to hear any advice people have for obvious mistakes I've made or areas I could improve. Particularly what people do to align their mounts in unfamiliar locations without the pole star (I just pointed it as best I could "north" and knew I had approximately the right latitude selected so I had minimal drift during videos). I include 2000x2000 crops of the original colour version as well as my colourised one.

Thanks a lot for looking!

Flickr link for higher resolution: https://flic.kr/p/GRHaUL

 

   

 

2016-05-08, Sol (Our star)
Cotswold Yurts, Chalford

Gear:
Skywatcher 130-PDS with Skywatcher 3x 2-element barlow (1950 mm, f/15)
Skywatcher NEQ6-Pro Synscan (unguided)
ND5 mylar solar filter
ZWO ASI120MC-S

Acquisition & Processing:
- Firecapture 4 panel mosaic [gain = 4, exposure = 1.0 ms, gamma = 50, 1280x960 1x1 bin]
- 4000 frames per panel
- Best approx. 800 frames stacked per panel in Autostakkert!2
- Wavelets in Registax 6, mosaic and processing in Photoshop CC

[Lowjiber]

Very nice first images.  I don't seen anything wrong.

Regarding alignment for solar imaging... We all like it perfect, but it's hardly necessary for solar captures.  At 30 fps, your 120 should be just fine by a rough alignment with a compass in an area where Polaris is not visible.

My $0.02 (US) worth.

Clear Skies

[David Smith]

Great shot!

[xtreemchaos]

there great first shots,lovely detail.well done mate.thanks  charl.

[Pete Presland]

Congratulations on you first solar image.

 

[Davey-T]

Great first image, I stick my mount down facing north using a compass then do a one star align on something circumpolar and just OK it, then GOTO Sun and it's usually quite close.

Also switch to solar tracking if necessary.

Dave

[laudropb]

Very nice for a first go.