SO if you want to see just how good Neil's image is...

[NickH]

And Damian/Pete

Read on...and I'll let you all draw your own conclusions..

Alan is an exceptional imager btw....one of the best solar imagers in fact...

and this is what he got with the 60" at Mt Wilson

jupiter from Mt. Wilson

Now...compare to what Neil got with a 10" scope and Pete with a 14" and Damian likewise..

[Keiran]

Wow... they really did get great results....

[AztecastroMcJ]

yep thats pretty disappointing for 60" scope,

think i'll cross that one off the upgrade list

and yes it does show how good a job Neil, Pete etc have done !

[neil phillips]

That is surprising Nick One would have expected better from such a large telescope under pristine skys. Maybe its worth sending the image in to sky at night mag. ive never done that ?

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

It very much depends on seeing. The 40" Pic-du-Midi shot posted some time ago was clearly sharper. Above a certain diameter, it is the seeing (and of course the level of skill of the imager) that limits the level of detail much more than the scope. Still, hats off to Neil! (as if there was ever any doubt about that)

[beamish]

Crikey ! , I have to say it's not that much better than mine taken with a 7" mirror !!

[NickH]

The skill of the imager here is not in doubt, Alan is a master in that respect. He uses good CCD's too...so ...

Hats off to the UK massive!! :-)

(and the Aussies too!)

[brianb]

yep thats pretty disappointing for 60" scope,

think i'll cross that one off the upgrade list

Ummm .... if you read Alan's report, you'll see that he was complaining about poor / bad seeing .... the things that have to come together to make a superb planetary image are a combination of excellent optics, good seeing and technique. I've known seeing conditions to be so bad that even 3" aperture showed as much as anything larger in terms of bright object detail; I reckon the seeing Alan had at Mt. Wilson was limiting the performance to something around about what could have been got with 10" in ideal conditions.

Damien seems to have found good seeing in Barbados, and Neil obviously has (occasionally at any rate) seeing which is pretty good by UK standards. So does Pete.

BTW just a comment on Alan's technique: for a start, his solar images are truly beautiful and full of detail, though less aggressively processed (read: softer) than those made by some other people. Secondly, I may not be in the same class as some of the other people mentioned above, but in my experience the capture and processing of solar images is a different skill to that of the capture and processing of planetary images (as well as requiring different instrumentation!), in fact I find that e.g. Mars and Jupiter require differing approaches to processing. Mars essentially requires to be re-learned every time it comes round because you forget in the 2 years between oppositions: a good reason for opening the Mars imaging season early, when it's still very small; for those of us in the northern hemisphere, this Jupiter season is really the first one for years with any chance of good results because Joop has been lurking in low southern declination since 2004. When we get more practice we'll probably improve.

[NickH]

Brian. To some extent I agree, being both in to solar and planetary imaging (C11 for the latter, PST/SV50 for the former), and Alan is meticulous in his solar approach (hand picking frames at times, and as you say taking quite a soft approach, which for me is the best way with planetary, see Pete/Damian's "surface blur" approach (it's probably not, but that's what it looked like :-)...and Pete and I discussed it a few weeks back)

Whilst the seeing obviously did have an impact, it's encouraging I think (and no disservice to Alan) to see that 60" of aperture on an average night on Mt Wilson can be matched and beaten by 10" from the UK

Optics you can hope that the 60" is pristine in that regard (having been on Palomar, that one is!), technique...he knows his stuff, CCD, spot on... so it's seeing for sure

[AztecastroMcJ]

Brian i have seen Alan's excellent Solar images before on CN

and i would agree they are amongst best i have seen from amatuer,

possibly due to soft technique u mentioned he uses.

I also agree with ur point in regard to seeing, tho if i'm honest i would still expect better result from 60" scope, and i would never be able to afford one either.

U have prob seen already but incase not heres another recent post by Alan showing Jupiter with his 10" Mak, he also mentions how seeing was poor with 60" scope.

http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/4067219/page/0/view/collapsed/sb/5/o/all/fpart/1#Post4067397

[beamish]

"Whilst the seeing obviously did have an impact, it's encouraging I think (and no disservice to Alan) to see that 60" of aperture on an average night on Mt Wilson can be matched and beaten by 10" from the UK"

That's pretty much the nutsan' bolts of it !