Solar Activity 22 Jun

[brianb]

A warm humid morning with sunshine but bad seeing after the cloud burned off, clouding over in the afternoon.

The Sun remains fairly quiet, but the overview shows a couple of faint smudges of activity rounding the east limb:

0907 UT. Coronado PST CaK, prime focus, DMK41

The more northern of these has white light faculae but no spots (at any rate in the seeing available)

0958 UT. WO FLT 110, Lunt solar wedge, 2.5x Powermate, DMK21

AR 1082 continues to evolve, stretching in E-W extent though the white light spot activity is in decline:

0920 UT. Solarscope 60, 2.5x Powermate, DMK21

0953 UT. WO FLT 110, Lunt solar wedge, 2.5x Powermate, DMK21

0936 UT. WO FLT 110, Lunt B1200 CaK diagonal, 2.5x Powermate, DMK21

The Ha overview shows little other activity on the disk and just two medium sized, medium brightness quiescent prominences, which are, as often seems to be the case, on diamterically opposite limbs:

0916 UT. Solarscope 60, 0.5x focal reducer, DMK41

There is a faint circular mark about half the diameter of the Sun at the 5 o clock position - possible superconvection cell? - very careful inspection of the CaK overview also shows this as a slightly smoother ring in the same position.

Here are closeups of the major prominences:

NW limb, 0925 UT. Solarscope 60, 2.5x Powermate, DMK21

SE limb, 0923 UT. Solarscope 60, 2.5x Powermate, DMK21

There are also two groups of faint but active prominences which I have processed with extreme gamma stretch & left in monochrome to emphasise them:

W limb, 0927 UT. Solarscope 60, 2.5x Powermate, DMK21

ESE limb, 0929 UT. Solarscope 60, 2.5x Powermate, DMK21

Transparency good but with some drifting altocumulus & fair weather cumulus. Seeing poor to bad with heavy boiling. Temperature 23C, wind W force 2-3.

[sheri_barri]

Gorgeous Brian!! The full disk image especially. I was able to get a quick look visually on the same day and your image captured the minute detail observed very clearly. Spot on!

~Sheri

[russ]

Excellent images Brian, really like the white light pics.

[GuillermoBarrancos]

Excellent images Brian, really like the white light pics.

Yes seems like that Solar Wedge really does make a difference.

I can manage to see some granulation. But not that detailed.

[brianb]

Thanks guys!

seems like that Solar Wedge really does make a difference.

It's maybe 10% better than solar film ... at 10x the cost.

The bigger difference I've made recently for white light imaging is deleting the solar continuum filter I used to use, leaving just the ND 3.0 filter which the solar wedge requires for safety. There is a marginal reduction in quality (maybe 10%) but in normal (moderate, poor or bad) seeing this is more than offset by the extra sharpness obtained by being able to use a much shorter exposure - 1/3333 sec for the white light images above. This only works because the FLT objective is very well corrected for colour, it wouldn't work even with an ED doublet. I've also added a motor focus unit with digital readout which slows down the business of focusing but helps me to get it more accurate when the seeing is poor.

I assure you that it is possible to do at least as well as this without paying premium prices for equipment which delivers marginal improvements in convenience and/or performance. But you need patience and reasonable seeing.

[GuillermoBarrancos]

Thanks guys!

It's maybe 10% better than solar film ... at 10x the cost.

The bigger difference I've made recently for white light imaging is deleting the solar continuum filter I used to use, leaving just the ND 3.0 filter which the solar wedge requires for safety. There is a marginal reduction in quality (maybe 10%) but in normal (moderate, poor or bad) seeing this is more than offset by the extra sharpness obtained by being able to use a much shorter exposure - 1/3333 sec for the white light images above. This only works because the FLT objective is very well corrected for colour, it wouldn't work even with an ED doublet. I've also added a motor focus unit with digital readout which slows down the business of focusing but helps me to get it more accurate when the seeing is poor.

I assure you that it is possible to do at least as well as this without paying premium prices for equipment which delivers marginal improvements in convenience and/or performance. But you need patience and reasonable seeing.

Thanks for answering!

Yes seeing also makes a lot of difference.

As you can see in my topic yesterday, I managed to process my best image so far, as I had a very short window of decent seeing yesterday when I came home. So the very first avi, was also the best. All the others afterwards were pretty bad.

I know the MS Livecam can do better than that. But I guess the summer isn't the best period to image the sun, with the boiling / disturbance in the atmosphere. Making focussing a gruwesome pain.

I'll keep trying!