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Sunspot Photo is Most Detailed Ever

Euan

By Euan
in The Astro Lounge

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brianb

brianb

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I do think the amateurs, whilst not a million miles away have obviously not the aperture to compete with this..

But there have been amateur images posted on CN by people with ordinary SCTs and full aperture solar film filters that are not all that far short of this - definitely showing the "crazy paving" nature of the granulation and detail in the tubules in the spot penumbra ... needs abnormally good seeing as well as sheer aperture & technique. I'm actually somewhat surprised that 1.6m with adaptive optics doesn't resolve more than this ... maybe something still needs tweaking and/or the pros at Big Bear could benefit from a visit from an amateur solar image processing expert.

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brianb

brianb

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It's resolving down to 65Km...from 93 million miles...

That's about 0.1 arc sec. There are amateur images (of moon & planets) taken with ~35 cm aperture which are showing details down to ~0.15 arc sec ... I reckon that - with good seeing etc etc - 1.6m aperture should be able to get down to better than 0.05 arc sec. Hubble is beating that by a big margin, without an atmosphere to bother it but with only 50% more aperture. OK, I know the sun makes its own bad seeing, and Hubble was not designed to be pointed anywhere near the sun (even Mercury is permanently off limits), but adaptive optics ought to neutralize that - and there are some pretty magnificent ground based white light images made at various specialist solar observatories (professional) which do not have the benefit of AO.

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NickH

NickH

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Brian...you've hit the nail on the head...it's the problem of what it's pointing at...and through our atmosphere too..

Still you're right, and I am sure we'll see better results as they tune it

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NickH

NickH

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It's like Pic Du Mid vs Pete/Damian's Jupiter images...close...for sure...and goes back to my point about what could someone do with that aperture and the equipment "we" use...

Good link, thanks for that one

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Talitha

Talitha

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Thanks Carol, but you missed my point entirely. The picture is beautiful, but it isn't a million miles from what Pete Lawrence, Nick Smith and Nick Howes produce, to mention just a few.

Didn't miss it, just misunderstood it... TBH, i just don't have time to look at everyone's images. Amateurs have taken lovely solar images, though. A few years ago i saw a sunspot image by Greg Piepol which closely resembled the one posted by the OP in this thread.

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brianb

brianb

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Good link, thanks for that one

Just happens to be one that's current. That Brazilian regularly posts very high resolution white light and Ha images (he uses a Lunt 50mm Ha etalon with a telecentric module in the same Zeiss 200mm refractor), some are actually better than the one I linked to. I reckon he has a "good seeing site" ... as well as top grade equipment and the skill to use it to good effect.

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brianb

brianb

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Don't want to blow my own trumpet, but yesterday I got the following image with 110mm aperture, in seeing which was far from good: must have nailed the focus for once - and shot more frames than usual, stacked 500 frames out of 3000 taken. 2010 Aug 27, 1316 UT: William Optics FLT 110, Lunt solar wedge, ND 3.0 but no other filters, 4x Imagemate (effective focal length approx. 3.0 metres), Imaging Source DMK21 camera.

post-16460-133877475413_thumb.jpg

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