solar newbie!!

[graham.hobart]

Hey folkers, having recently got myself a Lunt DS 50mm solar and with it came a ZWO 120mm mono camera- I am experimenting with settings.
I Wonder if anyone else out there has this combo?
I played a bit after work last night with sharpcap, and did the necessary attachments of camera to b600 filter then drag in out a bit.
What I am really asking is -does anyone else have any tips for getting imaging as I am mustard keen to get started and my Solar skills are pretty much empty space.
I have sharp cap so far!:thanx::thanx::eyepop:

[StuTodd]

I can say that you should use Registax6 or Autostakkert to stack your video or images after you have deleted the poorest ones.

Whichever program you use, run your stacked image through Registax wavelets processing to eek out the lovely detail. You can then tweek the curves to give colour to the image and brightness/contrast/cropping etc.

[Merlin66]

Autostakkert V3 for stacking the AVI files followed by Registax V5 (or V6) to apply some wavelet processing........

[sil]

+1:thumbsup:

Also have a try capturing with FireCapture. Whatever capture software you use, try to avoid boosting exposure which adds noise. If you are capturing full disc easily, look into reducing capture using a Region Of Interest feature to avoid capturing needless black around the sun. This will also write to disc quicker as you're capturing less data (but more meaningful data) and should let you capture at higher framerate too (giving you more data to process with). Same with capturing closeups of solar features... if you capture only the region of interest you can get more data to work with.

PIPP is also handy for some preprocessing tasks to make life easier in AS! or Reg6.

The stacking and wavelets processing often increases exposure in the process (ie makes the result brighter) so you can try increasing the shutter speed (reduce the exposure time per frame) making it look darker during capture on screen, but again this results in faster frames per second which means more data to process. You'll see and understand once you throw a capture into autostakkert. its always best in photography to err on the side of underexposure instead of overexposure as with under you have flexibility to enhance it but overexposure means you clip data and you cant get that back later, its gone during capture.