My attempt at eclipse corona

[Adelastro1]

I've finally gotten around to do some processing of my eclipse images and had a go at corona stacking with Fitswork software. It was pretty easy to use and I think I can probably improve a little on the result still.

I only had 5 usable images to stack and the first few attempts had the inner corona overexposed so I opened the shortest exposure RAW image and created 4 new files each 1 stop lower exposure (down to 4 stops below the original). The result worked quite well I think and detail can now be seen in the inner corona up to the edge of the sun. I also created a mask of the moon from the lowest exposure image and overlaid it on the stacked image to give a nice black moon with sharper edges. There was no moon surface detail visible in my images.

Let me know what you think and any suggestions for improvement.

Taken with D800E and Nikon 80-200 with TC17E, f2.8, ISO 200, f4.8, 1/60sec to 1/4sec exposures.

I have images from a D7000 and 50-500mm Sigma with 2x converter (1500mm equivalent) that I'm processing as well for the inner corona.

[iceman]

Very nice result, Wayne! Love it! Has some nice brightness to it still which some of the other HDR attempts lack.

[RickS]

Nice work, Wayne. Some good detail there.

Did you have high cloud at your site? I think that was a problem for most of us. I found stacks of a small number of images were quite noisy with my D800E. Did you notice that? It's hard to tell from the small image you posted.

Cheers,
Rick.

[Adelastro1]

Thanks Mike. It was more of a matter of toning down the brightness as I said, but you need some still to make it pop a bit!

[Adelastro1]

No I didn't notice any high cloud, only low cloud that rolled through just below the sun during totality! I haven't noticed much noise at all with my stacks. Did you use Fitswork? Yeh I always have trouble with posting images to get them below 200kb while trying to keep the image size and quality up! I'll upload it to another site and post a link tonight.

[RickS]

Wrt noise, I might have pushed mine a bit harder. I had a lot more data so I was able to clean it up by just stacking more frames.

I had a play with Fitswork but ended up using PixInsight and Photoshop.

[Adelastro1]

Ok. How did you find PixInsight? I followed this site which was posted here which I thought was great: http://www.gva-hamburg.de/sofi2006/fitswork/sofi_fitswork_uk.htm

[StephenM]

Nice work Wayne! I'll have to try this next time...

Cheers,
Stephen

[RickS]

I used the same instructions when I tried Fitswork. PixInsight has a LarsonSekanina filter and a collection of other tools that I'm familiar with so I thought I'd give it a go as well. Also, I didn't feel like aligning 171 images manually :)

PI worked pretty well and allowed me to automate some of the registration process. My first couple of attempts are here: http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=99909

I'm going to have one more go in the next few days and see if I can squeeze some more detail out of my data.

Cheers,
Rick.

[Adelastro1]

Here's a higher res on another site.

http://www.redbubble.com/people/poweripics/works/9691764-eclipse-cairns-2012-corona

[RickS]

Thanks... Very nice, Wayne!

[naskies]

Very nice, Wayne. Loving the contrast.

[Paul Haese]

Nice work Wayne. You have a smooth natural look to the corona. Catch you at the AGM.

[Matt Wastell]

That is a super image - really smooth!

[gregbradley]

Great job Wayne. One of the better corona shots.

Greg.