Hand tracked white light images AR2794/95

[Pete Presland]

1st opportunity to do some Solar imaging, in what seems like an eternity. Due to the time of the year, the Sun is barely visible from my garden, so a quick trip to the countryside.

As soon as i powered the mount up, i realised the battery was flat! Such a shame because the seeing looked pretty good at 11am. Anyway decide to grab what i could manually guiding the mount via the two very unsuitable home made Knobs on my EQ5.

The images are a bit of a let down for the conditions, but a bonus considering the flat battery. I could see some nice granulation on the preview screen, but my clumsy tracking has pretty made it invisible.

That said some nice detail in the Penumbra in AR2794.

Evostar120mm, Asi290mm, Lunt Wedge.

[Highburymark]

Very nice image of the large spot Pete. Can you briefly describe how you hand track these images - and is it possible to manually track in Ha and produce a satisfying result? Ie with a good alt az mount with slow motion controls?

[Luke]

Well done, Pete! I especially love these as you hand tracked them, that is some lovely detail on the spots.

I thought seeing was decent our way too around 11. 

I used to image a bit at lower power just letting the sun drift over the relatively large ASI174 chip.

[Pete Presland]

15 hours ago, Highburymark said:

Very nice image of the large spot Pete. Can you briefly describe how you hand track these images - and is it possible to manually track in Ha and produce a satisfying result? Ie with a good alt az mount with slow motion controls?

I don't see any reason why you could not get a decent image with a manually tracked Alt/Az mount. These images were only 120 seconds in length, so i cant imaging there would be too many rotations issues. 

As for how i tracked the A/R, its very simple. When i am Solar imaging/observing, i always make sure the mount is pointing north as accurately as i can, hopefully then any adjustments will mostly be in R/A. Open Firecapture, get the A/R centered on the screen and watch the direction of drift. Try adjusting the slow motion knobs to correct the drift before capturing, once familiar with the direction of the correction needed, hit record and do your best 😀

These images were at 3000mm Focal length, so the drift was quite quick. I used the reticle on the Firecapture screen to keep the A/R centered. There is significant loss of detail in both images around the edges due to difficulty i had tracking at this focal length.

As @Luke has said you can image at a lower power and let it drift across the field of view and achieve a similar result. Albeit with less resolution, i have done this with my Lunt 50 scope.

[Highburymark]

Thanks - very interesting.

[Davey-T]

Well done for making the effort Pete, same situation here with Sun too low behind trees.

Dave

[maw lod qan]

Nice images!

Till I started visiting and reading the posts here, I never gave any thought to just how far North the UK is!

[Rusted]

UTTERLY AMAZING!

I've been doing it all wrong! 😱 Worrying about image drift over 2 second videos at 300fps?
Nah. That is so yesterday! Who's a silly, senior, sausage, solar imager then? Twirly Moi!  👴🏻

I'm definitely using the [PPPUT] Pete Presland Push Up Technique from now on!
I just need to get my easterly bias sorted. 
Then it's all downhill from there.
Now I'm off to practice my "5 meter Solar Snatch and Jerk!" 

BTW Pete: NASA wants their solar telescope back ASAP. 

 

[Pete Presland]

3 hours ago, Rusted said:

UTTERLY AMAZING!

I've been doing it all wrong! 😱 Worrying about image drift over 2 second videos at 300fps?
Nah. That is so yesterday! Who's a silly, senior, sausage, solar imager then? Twirly Moi!  👴🏻

I'm definitely using the [PPPUT] Pete Presland Push Up Technique from now on!
I just need to get my easterly bias sorted. 
Then it's all downhill from there.
Now I'm off to practice my "5 meter Solar Snatch and Jerk!" 

BTW Pete: NASA wants their solar telescope back ASAP. 

 

That response has made me laugh, PPPUT 🙂 the close view also made see how noisy the image is.

[Rusted]

13 hours ago, Pete Presland said:

That response has made me laugh, PPPUT 🙂 the close view also made see how noisy the image is.

I wouldn't worry about the noise. That was just me playing with the processing. A straight crop is rarely beneficial.

[richard ashbee]

Great photo