This may be as good as it gets 18 April 2023

[Averton]

Since we made our SSM today's seeing was the best we have recorded at an average of 1.5 arc seconds and a standard deviation of 0.5. It may not be as good as we have ever had but there is no way to know. Anyway it was a lovely morning and allowed us time to try a number of things we have wanted to do for some time. Apologies for the number of images, we got carried away:)
We started with our normal 2 panel Ha full disk mosaic.
We then took some close up Ha images with the K102 DS. There is a close up of the north west crown proms. Also a 2 panel mosaic of AR3283, AR3281 and AR3279.

[Averton]

Instead of changing scopes out for a full disk 393nm, we kept the K102 on the mount and used a 0.8 Founder Optics reducer with the ASI178MM which gave us a two panel mosaic for the full disk. The scope had a 50mm aperture mask. We think it is the best combination we have yet tried.

Finally we took some 540nm solar continuum close ups with our 6" SCT and a 4.6x barlow with the ASI174MM. At F46 this is well oversampled, so we tried 2x2 binning. Interesting with one close up the non binned version looked better and the other region the binned version was best - go figure!!

[Saturnine]

Seems like you 2 had fun today, great set of images. Especially like the 540nm of AR3281 / 3279, excellent detail in the granulation. The rest are pretty speccy too.

[John W]

Lots of nice detail in those close up shots Clare / Peter. Well recorded.

Cheers,
John W.

[Derek Klepp]

P and C really good results.That seeing really shows up in the WL shots.During the last Solar cycle over a period of years at my location I found that only on 2 or 3 occasions did the seeing let me make full use of 150mm apertures for either WL or Ha.

[Averton]

Thanks Jeff :)
It was definitely a fun session and we probably got a bit carried away, but what the heck! Thanks for the feedback on the 540nm image. It's interesting as that one is the non binned image which in theory is very over sampled. We often have managed to get good planetary images with a way over sampled set up.

[Averton]

Thanks John :)

[Averton]

Thanks Derek :)
Totally agree, we rarely get seeing to support our apertures, both day and night.