28.10.20 Amazingly compllex AR!

[Rusted]

Afternoon sunshine spoilt by gales, cloud and thermal boiling.  More cloud coming but I'll keep trying.

[Rusted]

An hour later I was still fighting the wind, cloud and seeing conditions:

Note how quickly the strange feature to the east has changed.

 

Edited October 28, 2020 by Rusted
typo

[Davey-T]

Wouldn't it be nice to have some clear blue sky for a time lapse.

Dave 

[rcwinter]

Nicely done, great capture, we only had wind and rain today  😕

I saw the second area starting yesterday afternoon , it burst into life would be great to capture it before it’s gone 

thanks for sharing 

Richard 

Southampton UK 

[Rusted]

Thanks.

I just wish the seeing had been better between solid clouds.
It would have made a really amazing image if the detail had been sharp and still.

Despite 2-3 second capture times, for 500 frames, I still couldn't freeze the wind movements on the monitor.
It was blowing gale through the slit! Which was facing into the sou-westerly wind.

I try to keep exposures under 7ms by adjusting the gain in SharpCap.
Not sure if reducing the exposure times would help further in difficult conditions.
I usually capture numerous, short videos to try and grab the still moments between gusts and seeing conditions.

The solar surface looked just as if it was on under boiling water in a saucepan.
The images coming out of Autostakkert were obviously still soft and misty.
ImPPG works absolute wonders but couldn't pull off a miracle.
Though polishing the final image in PhotoFiltre helped the contrast further.

Yesterday I upgraded my SSD drives to internal 860 & 970 EVO instead of external T5 on USB3.
I'm planning to store the video captures on the 970 for maximum potential speed.
Perhaps 32GB of DDR4 RAM [instead of the present 16GB] will help to shorten capture times?
My imaging laptop is running an i7-6700HQ @2.6GHz. It is several years old now.

I may be fooling myself that these computer upgrades will provide serious [solar] imaging improvements.
Time will tell. I usually have four processing softwares open during captures. I process the last video as I capture the next.
That may put a burden on the system which could be avoided.

 

[Rusted]

The cloud cleared around lunchtime but I had to go out.
Same image. Lightly baked and overdone.

 

[Kitsunegari]

my approachis to use an old garbage computer with usb3 for capturing and storing,   then use my nice desktop for processing.   makes a world of a difference with an nvidia gpu on a desktop with more than 3.5ghz on a wall outlet

 

ssd is a must, but not a requirement.   You can always pickup a drill battery and a voltage regulator for the external harddrives.   

 

 

my capture computer is actually an HP allin one desktop with touch screen, and i just mounted it to a cart with wheels.   Its basically a giant laptop but with a screen i dont have to squint on      Can still be 12 volt powered as well.

Edited October 29, 2020 by Kitsunegari

[Rusted]

Impressive set up and thanks for the information.
What are we looking at in the telescope department? It looks complex!

BTW: Did you notice how much smother my image illumination is now?
Taking your advice on etalon collimation I wrapped the etalon element in plumbers Teflon tape before returning it to its cell.
There is still some off-axis brightness, at some tunings, but for a few seconds "upgrade" I am pleased with this obvious progress.

The image above was captured through thin cloud. So I have great hopes for much more realistic images when the seeing allows.
One can always judge the seeing by the amount of effort required to pull out the detail.
Always accompanied by the unwanted "measles." Presumably the inevitable spottiness, in the outfield, is due to digital artefacts?

[Lowjiber]

Rusted... I like your work above. 😀  I too like to reduce my exposure and increase the gain on poor condition days.  I cut the number of frames in half too to give me more captures/session in hopes of catching a good one.

Clear Skies

[Rusted]

Thank you John.

I may be my own worst critic, but I am often disappointed by much of what I produce in the way of solar images.
I must judge my results against those who post online. Much of what I see there totally eclipses my usual standard of image.

Only rarely am I pleased with one of my own images. This only ever occurs when I have enjoyed well above average seeing conditions.
The image on the monitor is clear, still and sharp during capture. Everything is laid bare as if looking down from a spacecraft.   
Autostakkert and ImPPG then produce even more fine detail without any real effort on my part.

I use my average seeing conditions as countless practice sessions for building experience and hopefully [eventually] some expertise.
If it were too easy it wouldn't be worth doing. Or everybody could do it. I don't have ten years of experience to fall back on.

So my strategy is to do as much imaging time as possible, as often as possible.
Putting in the countless hours as fast as I can. Instead of it being spread over many years.
Hopefully I can then "catch up" on those who have imaged only intermittently but over a much longer period.   

My real handicap is that I shall never have the experience [nor expertise] with sophisticated image handling software.
I process my images while I simultaneously capture more videos. Again and again and again while the sun shines.