Hi all,
Here is my first attempt at imaging. There were some nice prominences on the sun yesterday, so I had a go at imaging with a DMK21 I picked up from Mike Salway, a Coronado Helios 1 and 2x barlow.
Unfortunately I captured my best .avis in good seeing then realised when I went to use Registax that the codec I used for capturing wouldn't work. File that one away to memory (presumably to be forgotten for next time as well).
Hi Dave,
Download a programme call "Rad Video Tools" (Bink & Smacker).
You can then convert your video file to uncompressed Avi and Registax can then process it for you.
Cheers,
Duncan
Duncan, thanks for the advice. I'll give that program a go.
Matty, mine is the DMK21AF04, not the newer one that captures at 60 fps, but I have downloaded the firmware upgrade to bring it up to the speed of the new ones. I'll see if that helps improve things a bit.
Cant complain about that image David for a first attempt, I have no experience in this sort of imaging so I can only comment on its physical appearance, that said, well done indeed.
Very well done, Dave. Great to see the DMK is working for you. An excellent solar image, especially for a first go!
I've never processed solar h-a images before, but i'm sure with experience you'll get a smoother, more contrasty look to the prominences. I'm sure more data and better seeing will take you half way there.
How many frames did you capture and how many did you stack?
Excellent work.
btw you're not the first (and you won't be the last) to capture in the "DV" codec which comes out at the wrong resolution! I've done it many times, much to my frustration. I even did it the other night!
Sometimes when IC-Capture crashes, next time you load it up it starts with "default" settings - which includes the wrong codec. Once you change it to Uncompresses Y800, and exit the program gracefully, it'll still be there for you next time.
Hi Mike,
Looking at the .avi in detail, I'm not quite sure I understand what's going on. It says there are 1769 frames, but when I step through them every group of 10 frames is an identical image. I had set the exposure time on the capture software to be fairly long so I could see the prominences, and the frame rate was 30 fps. I suppose that the frame rate was too fast for the exposure time, which I now guess must have been 1/3 of a second. I'll have to invesigate this a bit more, as I'm not sure how the exposure setting affects things. The software says it stacked 62 frames (i just did an automatic processing), but maybe this only means there were 6 different images being stacked.
To improve the setup in general I need to get my mount polar aligned as well as possible so that I can capture more data before things drift. Also, I noticed that in the summer sun the mount and maybe even the scope itself are getting hot and presumably setting up air currents, which doesn't help the seeing. I think it will pay to set up quickly in the morning and capture data quickly before things heat up. I guess that is a bit different to nighttime imaging where it pays to let everything sit around for a while to equilibrate.
I did use the Rad Video tools software to convert the files with the wrong codec, but as you mentioned Mike the resolution of the file is wrong (360x240 rather than 640x480).
Here is another image made from processing a different avi from the same session. There were more frames though the same '1 frame in 10' problem was still there. There is more detail in the prominences, which could be due to more data, better seeing or a combination of the two.
