Massive sunspots AR3664 and 3668 (09/05/24)

[Kon]

What a treat with the sunspots yesterday. The enormous sunspots AR3668 and AR3664 from 09/05/24. They were visible with the solar glasses too. Unfortunately, I missed the good seeing due to work. 8" Dob, manual, asi462mc, UV/IR cut filter.

[Hughsie]

Top images and some lovely processing.

[LukeTheNuke]

Lots of detail! A manual dob? Are you moving the scope at all during capture or letting the sun drift over the chip? How many frames are you getting to stack?

[Kon]

27 minutes ago, LukeTheNuke said:

Lots of detail! A manual dob? Are you moving the scope at all during capture or letting the sun drift over the chip? How many frames are you getting to stack?

Thanks. For planetary imaging I use the drift method but for this particular capture I tried to move the dob or at least keep the sunspot in the middle of the sensor as I couldn't otherwise stabilise it in as!4.  For this image I had an 8,000 frame capture  and stacked the best 5%. The passing clouds were not playing ball to get more captures.

[Steve Ward]

11 minutes ago, Kon said:

Thanks. For planetary imaging I use the drift method but for this particular capture I tried to move the dob or at least keep the sunspot in the middle of the sensor as I couldn't otherwise stabilise it in as!4.  For this image I had an 8,000 frame capture  and stacked the best 5%. The passing clouds were not playing ball to get more captures.

Good to see you caught it ... 😀

I always bung my captures through PIPP before letting AS!3 loose on them , it'll stabilise the AVI by tracking a region of your choosing and crop the frames to a size of your choosing , as well as sorting the frames by quality and reordering them to make things a lot quicker i the stacking phase I find.

If I have multiple videos to play with I PIPP one while AS!3 stacks one and so on.

[Kon]

1 hour ago, Steve Ward said:

Good to see you caught it ... 😀

I always bung my captures through PIPP before letting AS!3 loose on them , it'll stabilise the AVI by tracking a region of your choosing and crop the frames to a size of your choosing , as well as sorting the frames by quality and reordering them to make things a lot quicker i the stacking phase I find.

If I have multiple videos to play with I PIPP one while AS!3 stacks one and so on.

That's what I usually do for planetary, put it through pipp but I always struggle to get it a surface anchor to work at pipp, unless I do something odd😂.

[bosun21]

9 hours ago, Kon said:

What a treat with the sunspots yesterday. The enormous sunspots AR3668 and AR3664 from 09/05/24. They were visible with the solar glasses too. Unfortunately, I missed the good seeing due to work. 8" Dob, manual, asi462mc, UV/IR cut filter.

Oh no Kostas! Something else for me to try 😂. Fantastic images. Was this using Baader solar film?

[Kon]

1 hour ago, bosun21 said:

Oh no Kostas! Something else for me to try 😂. Fantastic images. Was this using Baader solar film?

Thanks Ian. Yes the Baader. My full one had some pinholes so for this capture I only used some film on the offset opening.

I need to work out how to make one for the 12". I think you can buy a roll but I am not sure I need that much.

[LukeTheNuke]

3 hours ago, Kon said:

Thanks. For planetary imaging I use the drift method but for this particular capture I tried to move the dob or at least keep the sunspot in the middle of the sensor as I couldn't otherwise stabilise it in as!4.  For this image I had an 8,000 frame capture  and stacked the best 5%. The passing clouds were not playing ball to get more captures.

Wow, that's fantastic. Manual tracking! Well done! I used to use drift just for low power on the sun with a 60 mm refractor. It's great to see someone using a dob and manually tracking! It makes me wonder about using a manual dob for lunar imaging.

Edited May 10 by LukeTheNuke

[Steve Ward]

8 minutes ago, Kon said:

Thanks Ian. Yes the Baader. My full one had some pinholes so for this capture I only used some film on the offset opening.

I need to work out how to make one for the 12". I think you can buy a roll but I am not sure I need that much.

Unless you're blessed with great seeing most of the time the jump to the 12" will be a bit of a waste of film and effort unfortunately.

I often jumped to the Mak180Pro from the Tal 100 when I thought the seeing was good enough only to be severely frustrated.

[Kon]

23 minutes ago, LukeTheNuke said:

Wow, that's fantastic. Manual tracking! Well done! I used to use drift just for low power on the sun with a 60 mm refractor. It's great to see someone using a dob and manually tracking! It makes me wonder about using a manual dob for lunar imaging.

I have done lunar manually but it is not as good with the goto. If you look at the planetary section, I have done loads of good captures manually and I think because I only need the planet rather than an expanded region.

Waiting to get my goto back to action soon.

[bosun21]

37 minutes ago, Kon said:

Thanks Ian. Yes the Baader. My full one had some pinholes so for this capture I only used some film on the offset opening.

I need to work out how to make one for the 12". I think you can buy a roll but I am not sure I need that much.

For my 12" when I owned it I made a cardboard one with a cut out that was inside one of the four spaces between the spider veins. You only need that small area of solar film.