andyc
01-11-2021, 03:55 PM
Hi everyone,
So I got incredibly lucky on Friday. I set up in windy conditions and decided to have a fairly casual go at a timelapse of a sunspot group, having seen there was an X-class flare the previous day. Looked at the Sun, saw AR12891 looked the most interesting (though I only appreciated later it wasn't the site of the X-class flare), and started imaging a sequence of one frame per 45s at about 0205UT. AR12891 produced an M-class flare from about 0225-0300UT, peaking at 0242UT. This is the result!
The full-size video sequence is too large for here, but can be viewed on Dropbox at the link. There is a slowed-down version of the sequence after the 'normal speed':
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mk9cbq3tsrinmdh/2021-10-29_ac_flare_sequence.mp4?dl=0
Safe to say it's one of the luckiest sequences I've ever had in all my astro/planetary imaging career. It was my first substantial effort at a sunspot timelapse, having only had the Quark a few months, and had no other planning than casually seeing what region looked interesting on my day off, and I caught one of the biggest flares this month. I was pointed so straight at it that it started right in the middle of the field of view of the timelapse! You can see an initial knot of material twist and erupt, followed by the much bigger eruption of the main flare, contained within a loop of the magnetic field lines.
Equipment: Skywatcher Evostar 100, Quark CS, ASI290MM 2X2 bin, 15s (~2500 frames) mostly every 45s, with a couple of adjustments, stacked in Autostakkert, processed in Registax and assembled in Photoshop. There's a SDO sequence of the flare here (https://twitter.com/_SpaceWeather_/status/1454074583145926659?s=20).
Andy
So I got incredibly lucky on Friday. I set up in windy conditions and decided to have a fairly casual go at a timelapse of a sunspot group, having seen there was an X-class flare the previous day. Looked at the Sun, saw AR12891 looked the most interesting (though I only appreciated later it wasn't the site of the X-class flare), and started imaging a sequence of one frame per 45s at about 0205UT. AR12891 produced an M-class flare from about 0225-0300UT, peaking at 0242UT. This is the result!
The full-size video sequence is too large for here, but can be viewed on Dropbox at the link. There is a slowed-down version of the sequence after the 'normal speed':
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mk9cbq3tsrinmdh/2021-10-29_ac_flare_sequence.mp4?dl=0
Safe to say it's one of the luckiest sequences I've ever had in all my astro/planetary imaging career. It was my first substantial effort at a sunspot timelapse, having only had the Quark a few months, and had no other planning than casually seeing what region looked interesting on my day off, and I caught one of the biggest flares this month. I was pointed so straight at it that it started right in the middle of the field of view of the timelapse! You can see an initial knot of material twist and erupt, followed by the much bigger eruption of the main flare, contained within a loop of the magnetic field lines.
Equipment: Skywatcher Evostar 100, Quark CS, ASI290MM 2X2 bin, 15s (~2500 frames) mostly every 45s, with a couple of adjustments, stacked in Autostakkert, processed in Registax and assembled in Photoshop. There's a SDO sequence of the flare here (https://twitter.com/_SpaceWeather_/status/1454074583145926659?s=20).
Andy