Eastern limb mosaic, Feb 6th

[Starman]

Hands up, who though this would be of the Moon

Here's a mosaic of a large part of the Sun's eastern limb taken on the 6th February 2010 showing the main prom regions together with some interesting eruptive jets. A sign of more activity coming around the corner?

[JCJC]

It's a fair cop Pete. Awesome image so much detail, what camera was used?

Jordan

[Starman]

Hi Jordan,

I used a Lumemera SKYnyx 2-0M planetary camera.

[Beyond_Vision]

Superbly captured and presented as usual Pete.

Regards

Kevin

[TheThing]

Wow, that is a cracking ensamble! Well done and keep em coming.

[Starman]

Thanks Kevin and The Thing (Mark?).

[russ]

Incredible image Pete, so much detail. Makes me want my Pst back.

Russ

[Starman]

Yes Russ, now's the time to have a solar telescope handy as the Sun's really starting to wake up. About time too!!

[NickH]

Yup...time to unleash the toys again...

Been in hibernation all winter

superb image

[David Galvin]

Excellent detail Pete and an interesting choice of colour to show the detail. Very easy on the eye.

What about you Nick, any thoughts for this coming 'season'?

[NickH]

Very excited to be honest. ..hoping for a good year this year w.r.t solar activity. Just needs to climbb a wee bit higher for me to get some good imaging runs in..

[TheThing]

Thanks... and The Thing (Mark?).

Actually Hugh, but you can call me Mark!

Showed your photo to SWMBO, who is generally non-plussed by anything astro related. She thought it was fantastic too! Kept asking questions about the spots and prominences (sp?).

[David Galvin]

Very excited to be honest. ..hoping for a good year this year w.r.t solar activity. Just needs to climbb a wee bit higher for me to get some good imaging runs in..

Hopefully you do not have long to wait Nick, I always look forward to the updates from Peter, Merlin and yourself.

Clear skies gentlemen.

Regards from Dave.

[Starman]

Thanks for all the comments and sorry about calling you Mark Hugh - I got that from your sig. As for impressing your better half - that's a result. Use it to buy lots of solar equipment immediately

The choice of colour Dave is completely made up but this particular pallette is sort of a de-facto standard for h-alpha imaging, I guess because it conforms to our perception of what the Sun sort of looks like in our mind's eye. Well that's my excuse anyway. There are variations on the theme though so it's a bit like a variable-constant

The reason why you can see the joins in the prom region by the way is that the whole image is a mosaic created from single exposure images. What this means is that there's no composition between the surface and proms - just adaptive processing across a single exposure frame. As a consequence, the image stretch that's needed to pull the proms out also reveals the mosaic joins. This can be avoided but it's a lot more work when using single exposure frames.

We've waited for so long without any real activity, zooming in on tiny proms to make them look impressive, that getting some real activity is going to be a real treat. I'm really looking forward to all the different results as they pour in, but I'm also fearing an obsessive imaging period over the summer.

[NickH]

Indeed...hoping that the observatory option will at least cut down on the grief of running in and out of the house with kit this year though

[Kerrp30]

What a great picture, can you capture these pictures with a DSLR?, obviously you need a filter to save the scope and camera from overheating.

Did you falsify the colour as most I have seen have been grey in colour. Not being critical just want to know how someone gets such qulaity and detail. Do you need long exposures or do you need to stack these things on top.

Paul