Been too tired to stay out late or get up early for planetary in the last few days, so yesterday morning I decided to get some solar shots in before I headed out for Mothers Day shopping
Using my (homemade) white light solar filter, the view through the eyepiece was fantastic.. ar756 is HUGE! Seeing was only "ok" as the sun was still reasonably low at 8:30am.
I took some afocal shots with the digicam, but for some reason they turned out blurry, focus was off for some reason - the eyepiece view was focused. unfortunately I didn't find out they weren't focused until this morning
Luckily I also took some ToUcam shots. While planetary imaging with a Dob is frustrating and difficult, solar imaging with a dob is even more so. Of course I can't use the finder to line up the sun like I do with a planet, to allow it to drift through the FOV.. and when the sunspots are hidden away in the middle of the disc, it's very hard finding it on the chip in the first place, and the readjusting alignment so that it drifts through to take as many frames as possible.. very frustrating.
At newt prime focus it wasn't too bad, but with the barlow in it was almost impossible, I only got one workable avi and the sunspot region is so big, I only got 30 frames to work with before it drifted out of the FOV.
Anyway enough blah here are the results:
Details:
- 10" dob with ToUcam
- ~30-80 frames stacked & wavelets processed in registax
- Unsharp mask and levels adjusted in photoshop
Managed to grab 756 too, with my Vixen 102mm f9 refractor, Meade LPI and a Televue x5 Powermate. A single exposure of 1/1000 sec using Baader 3.8 astrophotography Solar Film Filter that is for photo use only - WARNING, NOT FOR VISUAL USE.
Brisbane, 29 April 2005, 10:10am.
Cheers
Dennis
PS - I'm new to the Group so hopefully, if the file uploaded successfully, it is less than 60K.
you just cant help yourself can you, great clear photos you took with that cheap brazillian camera of yours! Notice the new possible sunspot on the edge of the eastern limb. bit of activity there. I just can't beleive how you can get great focus like that from plastic lenses
Sadly my 10 inch isnt portable, Im coming down with George, who will no doubt have a scope of his own. My equatorial mount is polar aligned and left more or less permenently set up in my back yard, covered against the weather.
its not a contraption it is state of the ART. that is lots of heART gone into making that. Methinks george has a lot of work to go on that one, but when he finishes it and has the mirrors aluminised, the ladder will be the next project
