Sun white light May 3

[cometcatcher]

Some nice spots showing again up as the Sun rotates around. And I'm having fun with my super cheap secondhand fleabay Meade refractor. Makes me wonder just how much better the not so cheap ED100 I'm soon getting will be. Atmospherics seem to be the biggest factor. Took a bunch of frames and only 1 stood out as sharp. This is it. Meade SN102 OTA, 1/125 second at ISO 100, Pentax K-x, Orion solar filter.

[JB80]

Nice Kevin!

The seeing can make all the difference, as it's heating up over here the white light imaging is becoming much harder.

Looks good on your end though. :D

[cometcatcher]

Thanks Jarrod. Soon there will be fewer spots so I'm making hay while the Sun shines. ;)

[h0ughy]

i think the jetstream got to this one - slightly off sharp

[cometcatcher]

I think so. I can almost see the smear that it makes. Mind you I'm also shooting over a road and house roofs which will not help.

[JB80]

Shhhh! I don't want to think about it just yet. Although it would be a good excuse to follow through and do the Stage 2 modification to the Ha scope.

[Amaranthus]

Did you colour it in processing, or use a Wratten filter? (I'm assuming you used a mylar filter over the front aperture...)

[cometcatcher]

Barry, the full aperture filter is an Orion glass solar filter and the colour you see in the pic is the colour it produces, which is fairly close to natural Sun colour I think. In photoshop processing I reduced the midtone slider to boost contrast and reduced the saturation to compensate. I ran a modest unsharp mask to sharpen it up a bit.

[Amaranthus]

Interesting. My mylar filter gives a white-blue tinge to the light, which I either 'correct' by using a Yellow/Orange Wratten at prime focus, or in post-production. See for instance my recent 28 April eclipse image (raw).

[cometcatcher]

My mylar eclipse glasses give a blue-white view like your image above also.