Yay!! I finally got to try out my shiny new Coronado PST this afternoon.
With scattered cloud always threatening to ruin my fun, I spent a few minutes phaffing about with the PST on a camera tripod but found myself focused more on trying to keep everything still rather than being able to settle down and concentrate on the image produced by the standard 20mm Kellner eyepiece. In the short moments when things were still I found the pitiful eye relief of the Kellner to be annoying and the detail revealed disappointing.
Thinking I had made a mistake with this little solar scope, I hurried inside and pulled out my Vixen 6mm NLV. WOW!! What a difference, I quickly decided that it would be worth the extra setup time to piggy back the PST off my C8/EQ6Pro.
Having dragged everything outside, removed my guidescope, and stuck the PST in its' place, I settled in for a good hour or so tracing the solar limb watching a number of prominences do their thing, whilst periodically retuning to take a look at some of the disc details and granulation. The 66x provided by the Vixen made for the perfect mix of detail and FOV.
Next I dragged out my PC with my DMK and tried to get some images, failing to reach focus with the DMK I gave my old PCVC840K a shot. No joy here either. There is just not enough backfocus on the PST.
As a last resort I made a somewhat adlib attempt at some eyepiece projection shots with my Canon 550D. A 25mm Plossl did the trick along with a number of parts from various camera adaptors. The normal projection adaptor didn't work because it moves the eyepiece too far back and you run into the same back focus issues as with the DMK/webcam.
The final image consists of 10 subs and 10 darks, 1/400 sec exposures @ ISO 1600 processed in Maxim DL Pro and PS CS5.
Results can be seen in the second attached image. You can see the full sized image
here.
I am still coming to terms with Maxim DL Pro, this image is the first I have tried to process with it. I will also need to fine tune my adlib 550D adaptation as it allowed a lot of stray light to leak in destroying contrast across half of the frame. Some dark frames helped but as you can see from the photo, there is a fair amount of washout/vignetting, although I have tried hard to compensate in processing, I am less than happy with the raw data.
The prominences suffered particularly badly due to a lack of contrast and the processing needed to bring them out has resulted in a fair amount of noise.
Has anyone here successfully modified a webcam for prime focus video capture on the PST? Also, any tips that can be offered regarding Maxim DL Pro's toolset for processing these sorts of images would be greatly appreciated.
L8r
TT
PST First Light
). If your nosepiece has a shoulder at the back around the outside like the ones that come with the DMKs you'll need to grind that off too.
