Sol 22May24

[Kinch]

1st Light

I had the chance recently to buy a second hand good quality solar telescope at a very good price. Solar imaging has been on the back of my mind for some time and when this scope came on the market at what really was an exceptional price I just had to go for it. Twice I had it set up last week and those two first days were very frustrating...I was getting nowhere.

Yesterday, it was 3rd time lucky. It all came together and finally I had data to make a picture. 

[Dave Smith]

Very nice 👍

Dave

Edited May 23 by Dave Smith
Spelling

[Kinch]

Thanks Dave 👍

[Rusted]

Congratulations! An excellent, negative and coloured image with lots of fine detail.
You captured a lot of flaring and well contrasted filaments. All nicely balanced.
A negative image can seem more detailed and dramatic than a positive.
However your image stood up remarkably well to my crude conversion to B&W.
Then conversion to negative and finally resized down to only 600 pixels.
I hope you will forgive my meddling with your artistry.

 

[Kinch]

"I hope you will forgive my meddling with your artistry."

I wouldn´t call it artistry. This is my 1st effort at both capture and processing....all done within maybe 14 hours. I have lots to learn but find it encouraging to know that the image has stood up to your "meddling" as you put it 😄. (The fact that you even took time & played around with it, is appreciated).

[Rusted]

Negative images are not universally appreciated by all solar imagers. Where negative images are posted I like to see a positive for comparison. Your "first" image really was excellent. Well above average quality and on a really impressive image scale. No doubt we can look forwards to many more images of similar or even better quality from you.

[Kinch]

4 hours ago, Rusted said:

Where negative images are posted I like to see a positive for comparison.

I am not sure this 2nd one is as good as the first (Data acquired during the same session)....but with practice....hopefully I WILL improve. Both versions here...but I think I still prefer the negative for the effect. (I should add that these two images were processed independently of each other).

Edited May 24 by Kinch
add info.

[Rusted]

You are setting a high standard from the off. Being hypercritical I would suggest your positive image is slightly over-sharpened. It has a very slight, overall graininess. Suggestive of uniform artifacts. That's probably just me. I hate over-sharpening. It was pointed out to me, early on, that my H-alpha images were over-sharpened. So I eased back on ImPPG and aimed for a more natural appearance. This quickly improved my images. So, after initial shock at being criticized, I was very grateful for the heads up. A lot of it is to do with seeing conditions. When the seeing is bad one tries [often too hard] to draw out the fine detail. Careful examination of the best solar imagers work is another way to flatten the learning curve. I hasten to add that I do not include myself as a great solar imager. I used literally hundreds of hours of solar imaging as my passport to steady progress. Those with natural talent can take a slightly shorter route to fame.
 

[Kinch]

29 minutes ago, Rusted said:

Being hypercritical I would suggest your positive image is slightly over-sharpened.

You are 100% correct. I had done the negative earlier today and had no intention of doing the positive. I rushed it then, when doing it for my above post as a reply to yours. I can see it quite clearly as being much inferior (in processing) to the negative version. No worries here about positive criticism....it my earlier processing days, it was a remark about my stars that changed my processing for the better ... so your comments are are welcome and well understood.  I may very well reprocess the positive version if I decide to post elsewhere - but in truth, I had planned not to post beyond what I have done already today, until I get a bit more practice under my belt......when I can be a bit more self critical and not be so amazed by what my new scope is showing me.   🙂