Solar activity 20th August

[PeterM]

A bubbling, boiling Sun in rather windy & dust in the air conditions. Lots going on & my first attempt at the disc. Lunt 60mm single Stack, B1200, ZWO 120MMS. 500 images stacked with Registax 6. Tough gig today.

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

Peter,
You did well!
Some nice proms there, and the AR2771/2 came out OK.
Well done!

[Saturnine (Jeff)]

Good set of images Peter, seems that with the increase in activity, that there is always something worthy of imaging given the conditions.

[PeterM]

Thanks Ken & Jeff

I got my B1200 from Lunt...ooops nearly... not good that the K & L are next to each other on the keyboard.... I almost posted and just realised ... I would have been banned for 60 days ! hehe.

I wanted to test the B1200 against the Coronado BF10 I had been using. I am amazed the Coronado BF10 visual view is brighter than the Lunt B1200 in both the Solarmax 40 & Lunt 60? So I did a comparison image with both through the Lunt and both seem to be equal in that area.

So yes, the sky conditions were and often are a challenge for Solar so I am much appreciating the trouble and efforts you guys go to for your images.

There is a huge amount of dust in the air that seems to have come up from NSW? Well that's likely now going to effect the skies at our Leyburn site for this weekend.

Anyone else getting this dust that's been around for a few hours now on the Gold Coast?

Peter

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

The Coronado and Lunt blockers are not identical in bandwidth, CWL (central wavelength) or transmission.
The blocker bandwidth and CWL depends very much on the bandwidth and finesse of the etalon - they should be matched to minimise off band leakage.


I found similar differences when using a Lunt blocker on my SM60 set-up, but in my case it was a brighter (!!) image. I eventually traced the "issue" to a failed ITF in the Coronado. Once this was replaced the image from the Coronado blocker was as bright (if not marginally better) than the Lunt.

[PeterM]

Thanks for that Ken,

This gives you some idea of the dust in the air for this mornings images. Also my setup. The "snake" runs cables for mount power, hand controller, ZWO camera & Moonlite Focuser back into the unit where I can now easily see the computer screen and operate in more comfort!

[AstroJunk (Jonathan)]

Nice one peter, and yes, its been very dusty all day!

[jahnpahwa (JP)]

Those pics seem great to me! Nice work



I put together a solar filter from baader sheet today, looked at the sun, took pics of the sun and my eyes and camera both survived.


I had my dslr plugged in, tried focussing by digi-zooming into the edge but man i found it hard. Is there a trick to focussing? That big sight screen looks handy! I could really only see my own reflection on the camera screen because (surpruse surprise) i was bathed in sunlight and looking directly toward the sun.

[Eris (Gerard)]

Peter it was great to view your imaging results despite the conditions you had to contend with. Hopefully weather in your area will improve soon.

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

JP,
Unless there is lots of detail visible, like sunspots getting a good focus is problematic. Takes time and practice to get it right.
A dark sheet covering the camera (and you) will make things easier.