Solar Active Regions - 27th May 2021

[Stu]

I popped out at lunchtime to have a look at the active regions on the Sun today in white light. Whilst the seeing was quite wobbly, I got some very good views, best at around x100. Any higher was not worth bothering with.

I used my trusty FC100DC and Baader Coolwedge fitted with a Continuum filter (hence the green!) on a SkyTee2 mount. I have recently fitted a larger fine focus knob to the Feathertouch and this does seem to help nail the focus even more easily.

For observing I used Baader Mark IV Binoviewers and Zeiss Orthos, but I took smartphone images using a barlowed Leica Zoom and Celestron NeXYZ mount. Phone used was an iPhone 11 Pro with x2 camera.

For image capture I use ProCam 8, and for processing I use PS Express.

Most of the images were not very detailed because of the poor seeing, but a couple showed better detail, so I cropped and processed these. I’ve added one of the less detailed images at the end as an example. Some were much worse than this when the seeing was bad. There was some muck on my eyepiece which is causing the grey patch, cropped out where I could.

In the second to last image, I was pleased to catch the second tiny pore just above the right hand AR, visible visually but hard to capture.

[IB20]

Lovely images. I quite like the colour of the continuum filter!

 

[Davey-T]

Looking good Stu, managed a few vid's between the clouds, is that a dust bunny ? just reminded me I forgot to take any flats 😂

Dave

[Mark at Beaufort]

@Stusome nice images. I did wonder whether you were using your Tak FC100DC. Even though I initially viewed with the Double Stack PST I must admit I do like the images in white light.

[Stu]

2 hours ago, IB20 said:

Lovely images. I quite like the colour of the continuum filter!

 

You do get used to it after a while. I sometimes get confused when people who haven’t looked through a solar scope before ask what the green is, because I don’t notice it any more!

[Stu]

2 hours ago, Davey-T said:

Looking good Stu, managed a few vid's between the clouds, is that a dust bunny ? just reminded me I forgot to take any flats 😂

Dave

Indeed, not really a dust bunny, more a splodge of something on the eyepiece! Stuff like that shows up so much more with solar observing!

[Stu]

2 hours ago, Mark at Beaufort said:

@Stusome nice images. I did wonder whether you were using your Tak FC100DC. Even though I initially viewed with the Double Stack PST I must admit I do like the images in white light.

I’m a sucker for white light observing I must say. I think because the contrast is much higher than with Ha, and the detail is a bit more accessible. Recently I have been enjoying the views through my PST mod too though, some of the detail around the recent ARs has been pretty impressive.

[PeterStudz]

Great pictures. I’ve had a solar filter for a few weeks now but annoyingly haven’t yet had the time (or it’s been cloudy) to try and use it.

[Stu]

5 minutes ago, PeterStudz said:

Great pictures. I’ve had a solar filter for a few weeks now but annoyingly haven’t yet had the time (or it’s been cloudy) to try and use it.

Thanks Peter. I haven’t been out for a while for similar reasons, but today was surprisingly nice. Forecast seems better moving into next week too. Hope you get a chance soon.