Photo with PST at last!!

[Mark at Beaufort]

I bought a PST in 2005 mainly for the Annular eclipse in Spain and the total eclipse in Turkey in 2006. Attempts to photograph the Sun in Ha light have never been quite successful mainly because of the limited focusing ability of the PST. However, I recently upgrading my eyepieces to Hyperion and also purchased the adaptor to allow me to connect to my Canon SLR via a T mount. Today I used the new system with a 17mm Hyperion and my original D30 DSLR. Below is my first attempt and the PST focused without any difficulty. Least I could see the prominence at the top of this photo. Hopefully, things will improve and the sun will shine on the 1^st August for the Partial eclipse and we might get a few prominences as well!! Any advice on improving using a PST will be appreciated.

Mark

[daz]

Starman, NickH and I think KK are the PST boys Mark, I'm sure they'll offer some advice...

In the meantime, great image and that's a nice prom at the top!!

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

There was an article I read somewhere about using colour cameras with a PST. The long and short of it was that the metering system will massively overexpose if given half a chance, which is a bad thing, but can also be a good thing. The interesting bit is where the red channel gets oversaturated and the sensels (sensor pixels) bleed signal into the other channels. Where it gets intersting is when you consider the bayer matrix as there are two green, one blue and one red per square of four sensels. If you split the channels in Photoshop for example, the best quality image is got by overexposing the red so that it bleeds into the green. You then only use the green channel and recolour it in Photoshop.

Does that make sense?

Kaptain Klevtsov

[Mark at Beaufort]

Thanks KK. I have Photoshop CS3 extended so I have a good idea what you mean. I will have a go on the original - I should have taken the picture in RAW but I will see what I can produce from the jpg. If it improves I will post another photo. Thanks

Mark

[Mark at Beaufort]

Following KKs advice I have adjusted the red and green channels and it does appear that the prominence is much better. Any thoughts on whether I have over done it?

[Mark at Beaufort]

I think I over did it.

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Looks good to me. Proms are hard to capture actually. If you can get the orange peel look captured, that looks great, but you'll need to drop the exposure a lot from where you are now.

Kaptain klevtsov

[Helen]

There was an article I read somewhere about using colour cameras with a PST.

Kaptain Klevtsov

Was it this one? http://astro-nut.com/SolarPrimer.pdf

Helen

PS its a big download

[Mark at Beaufort]

Thanks Helen for finding this document and KK for mentioning it. I will print out and try and understand the whole process although from the initial read it does suggest that photos should be taken in RAW mode.

Mark