Solar white light imaging beginner

[MimasDeathStar]

Hello all,

I was thinking about white light solar imaging but I am a little confused as to what would be the preferred technique. With my little scope I'm a bit limited to full disc shots as I'm not picking up a huge amount of surface details (espescially with it being solar minimum I guess!).

I think some people are just using a dslr and taking shots and prime focus - whereas others seem to be using lucky imaging of the full disc - or lucky imaging to build up mosaics. Is there a "best way" to do it? I would have assumed that the mosaic shots would hold the most interesting details but the full disk dslr shots look pretty great too to me so I'm not too sure!

Many thanks

[Davey-T]

What sort of solar filter are you using ?

Not much to see in WL ATM although there is a sunspot today which is very handy for focussing in WL otherwise not much to image.

You can take single shots with a DSLR and solar film but doubt it will get much surface detail, some sort of solar wedge will yield more surface detail.

Dave

[Merlin66]

The way to go is to use a mono CMOS which can give a fast frame rate - faster the better.

Collect a 500+ frame AVI, run it through Autostakkert3 (freeware) tweak in in Imppg (again free) crop and colour in infranview (free) and you have surprising results.

Good time to practise...when Cycle 25 kicks in hopefully there will be plenty of detail to record.

 

[MimasDeathStar]

4 hours ago, Davey-T said:

What sort of solar filter are you using ?

Not much to see in WL ATM although there is a sunspot today which is very handy for focussing in WL otherwise not much to image.

You can take single shots with a DSLR and solar film but doubt it will get much surface detail, some sort of solar wedge will yield more surface detail.

Dave

I'm just using a baader solar film filter. You think a wedge would make a big difference?

[Davey-T]

12 minutes ago, MimasDeathStar said:

I'm just using a baader solar film filter. You think a wedge would make a big difference?

As usual the more money you spend the more you get to see, have you had a read through the solar observing / imaging sections to see what's possible ?

Dave

[MimasDeathStar]

19 hours ago, Davey-T said:

As usual the more money you spend the more you get to see, have you had a read through the solar observing / imaging sections to see what's possible ?

Dave

No I'll have a look at that thankyou for the advice!

[Bobby1970]

I have only had a very brief go with my newly purchased wedge. I have previously only used solar filter film and made my own filter. 

Despite there being little to nothing to see when I had a look with the wedge it was clear that more granulation of the sun was visible. Much more so than I had noticed previously. 

I'm looking forward to summer when I can hopefully get some longer sessions in and fingers crossed there will be more activity to see.