C-19 Lockdown... First attempts at Solar!

[TakMan]

More than 150 .AVI movies taken over Wednesday and Thursday (25/26th March) after work was shut down due to the virus. So decided to enjoy the sun and try my hand at solar whilst the SBIG camera is in America being mended.

Equipment:

Tak TSA102S, TV Everbright Diagonal with 2" Baader UV/IR screwed into the scope end. Quark Chromo. An old DMK 41 AF02.AS mono Firewire camera (with Revelation 0.5x reducer screwed onto it), connected (with all sorts of dongles!) to a 2016 Touch Bar MacBook Pro.

Mount was my manual alt/az Nova Hitch with tracking unit. The tangent arms/drives give me probably about 20-30mins before they need to be re-set.

Most movies were around 30-45 seconds running at the max of 15FPS. Still learning what the best way to capture is... extend exposure time, increase gamma and/or gain. Not sure if best to take two shots (one for the surface and one for proms), or just take one and then expand the histogram...? So have a mixed bag of single and double exposures to play with.

Thanks to both 'MalVeauX' and 'Michael.H.F.Wilkinson' for their tutorials on here.

Not completely happy with the proms and the transition into the void... nor the sharpening I've tried, but for a first 'proper' go, not too bad.

This was just a random file from Thursday. Best 90 frames from 451. Remembered to take a flat frame movie (bag method).

Settings:

Brightness: 0
Contrast: 250
Gamma: 10
Gain: 367
Auto Gain: off
Exposure (msec): 12
Frame Format: not recorded
Input Frame Format: MONO8 (8bpp monochrome)
Image size: 1280x960
Frame rate/sec: 1/15
Filter: UV
First frame: 15:22:06.720
Middle: 15:22:21.718
Last frame: 15:22:36.717
Duration (seconds): 29.997
Frames captured: 451
Frames per second (average): 15
Filename: oaCapture-20200326-152206.avi
Recording type: AVI
Limit (seconds) : 30
Histogram Min: 4
Histogram Max: 203
Histogram %: 79%

So just the one exposure used to try and get both the surface and proms... is this the 'best' way to do things..?

Captured in OACapture. Processed in AstroStakkert!2 on an old PC, also used for deconvolution in ImPPG.

Messed with (don't look too closely), back on the Mac, PS CC2017

Thanks for looking,

Damian

 

 

 

 

The set-up with the tracking Nova Hitch.

 

Edited March 30, 2020 by TakMan

[MarkAR]

Lovely images with a nice row of proms.

[Rusted]

Amazing! 

[Ouroboros]

They are! Almost tempts me to the light side! 🙂 

[TakMan]

Thanks for the positive comments.... still playing with the same data. Made a dark frame today and continued to try out ImPPG settings...

Like this colour and less noise in and around the proms...

Red haze into the void still not 'right', but we'll get there!

Any links to how to correctly apply the scale of the Earth..?

D

Edited March 30, 2020 by TakMan

[TakMan]

Been reading up on how best to use AstroStakkert!2 (specifically the size of the alignment box to use and how to read the quality graph), also how to get the most out of ImPPG. Testing and re-testing different techniques.

Instead of having to keep moving the files over to the PC (deep sky imaging machine / PHD2, etc) and then back again to the Mac (my main graphics workhorse), I've been able to get both AS!2 and ImPPG wrapped in Wine today, so now can do everything on Mac (and most importantly a calibrated 30" monitor).

So, processing version 3, done 4-ways... 90 frames from 452. OACapture > AS!2 > ImPPG > PS CC2017

Time to move onto one of the other movie files... but here is V3 of the same data., done 4-ways...

 

Also attached, a comparison from my first go to the third, showing steady improvement in processing skills. Much happier with the details, colour and noise, or lack of.

Not bad for an old Firewire camera and an alt/az tracking mount!

Thanks for looking...

D

 

Edited March 31, 2020 by TakMan

[TakMan]

Taken 10 minutes before the above images, trying to capture more in the proms... 31ms capture.

Brightness: 0
Contrast: 250
Gamma: 16
Gain: 322

 

Really quite enjoying this solar imaging!

 

[TakMan]

Sorry to keep adding to this thread. Been following an ImPPG tutorial to try an 'inverted tone curve' for my latest go at processing.

This prominence was really faint. I'm sure it's good practice though for when the sun bursts into life again and I get chance to try and process a really decent one!

Somewhat over sharpened, but we're learning all the time. 90 frames from 452. Dark and flat calibrated in AS!2, then ImPPG, then Ps.

I've added a GONG image taken 3 minutes before my own data was captured to show its position.

 

[Pete Presland]

Very nicely imaged and processed.

[TakMan]

Last solar image for today (and from the 26th... probably). It’s my Birthday tomorrow, will be a bit of an odd one this year... but I hope to look at processing some of the prom shots from the 25th.
Anyhow, this is a bit of an arty shot, also using the inverted tonal curve. It was imaged 5 mins after the previous image posted (you can see even in this short space of time some differences between the previous shot), with a higher gamma setting and longer exposure to try and capture more of the detail in the prominence at the expense of surface detail, which was mostly whited out (clipped). I actually colourised it in two of the ‘recognised’ ways (levels and colour balance) and then merged the two to make this blend.

Edited April 1, 2020 by TakMan