Triple Stack Trials and Tribulations - 30th January

[marktownley]

It's been a bit of an up and down kinda day today; I was annoyed with myself that I woke with a thick head despite knowing clear skies were forecast, when I got up the record sleeves on the living room floor and the empty bottles in the kitchen pointed to the late night cause. After a grey start the skies soon turned blue and I was out on this chilly winters morning set up and ready to go. I wanted to test out the triple stack again; popping in an eyepiece in the scope I found myself ooo-ing and ahh-ing at the view, etched filaments all over the disk, bright plage and proms galore, I was a happy bunny! I decided to go for an image but the PGR blackfly was just not playing ball; the ethernet cable was slack in the port in the back of the camera and the gusty wind was causing it to disconnect, I had a new cable which was a tighter fit which solved things, but then could only record at 4fps (don't know why!) and given the fast moving clouds I was now beginning to swear. As I looked at the view on screen I could tell it was offband, and upon exploration of cause found the hinge plates on my coronado etalons had worked loose and was causing sag I couldn't compensate for. Despite 4fps I ran off an image and went inside to warm up with a coffee and to plan the next move.

TS-Morning-BW by Mark Townley, on Flickr

TS-Morning-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Coming back outside with my coffee I was expecting the sun to be in the trees, but, lo and behold it was not. You may recall my gripes about my neighbours eucalyptus trees that clog my southern horizon, well the stormy wind we had on friday seem to have started it to split where the trunk bifurcates, and as a result was hanging much lower that normal - result! It now means my winter window has expanded by a couple of hours A couple more winter storms and I reckon it could be down

I decided to have an impromptu maintenance session: etalons off. hinge plates adjusted and tightened, and reinstall of drivers for the PGR. Bingo, back in business. Looking through the scope it was clear it was on band now. I'm pretty pleased with the result I got:

TS-Ha-BW by Mark Townley, on Flickr

TS-Ha-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

I did a bit of messing around with the tuning and found could get a tighter view at the expense of even illumination. This was taken at a slightly shorter focal length.

TS-smaller-scale-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

TS-smaller-scale-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Visually the view really is nice, and not particularly dimmer than in double stack, certainly no problems with light levels in recording it on camera. It really is going to work for outreach as the features really do jump out, single stack seems rather pale in comparison! The setup is a Lunt 50 etalon on the end of my usual double stacked coronado 40mm scope, at 700mm focal length with the PGR Blackfly IMX249 GigE camera.

Hope you like! Grey returns again tomorrow, so that's my solar for another week, hopefully next weekend will be clear.

Mark

[gabrieli]

Hi Mark

The contrast is so pronounced that the filaments give a the impression of "floating" over the surface.
Interesting results.

Lou

[marktownley]

Visually it is jaw dropping Lou, the photos don't do the view through the eyepiece justice.

[robert]

Interesting!
Robert

[pedro]

amazing shots of the BIG floating prom Mark. well done.

It was amazing visually as well

[Calavera]

Hi Mark,

as mentioned before - GREAT results!

Visually it is jaw dropping Lou, the photos don't do the view through the eyepiece justice.

I absolutely can confirm this with my triple 60 and I just quit trying to catch on photo what I can see visually - the results are dissapointing every time as they could not stand against the visual impression.

Cheers
Chris

[Derek Klepp]

Mark a great result.Those Eucalypts don,t belong there.

[marktownley]

Thanks all! Can't wait to get out imaging with this setup again.

Those Eucalypts don,t belong there.

You're right Derek. The situation seems to be getting better with them. I was looking from the loft window earlier this morning and thought the garden they are in looked different, got out an old photo and saw that at some point recently the whole garden had been cleared - it was like overgrown scrub / woodland! Loads of space been cleared around the trees and could see there was scaffolding up all around the property (which was previously hidden by the jungle!). The property itself was very tired and in need of much work, and we wondered if the owner had passed away. It is a 'council house' and the local authority are doing the work. So I remain optimistic that the council may shift these trees or the winter storms will

[Ibbo]

sound like you have found a good thing to come from the storms

Looking very nice
I still need to get into the workshop and sort out an adaptor or 2

[Carbon60]

Cracking images, Mark. That's a heck of a scope.

Stu.

[arnedanielsen]

Very nice set of images showing lots of interesting features!!

Best regards,
Arne

[Montana]

These are most beautiful why oh why was I doing gardening work I would have loved to have seen this prom through the solarscope, you can tell I am just a wee bit green

Alexandra

[marktownley]

Thanks all!

You've got it the wrong way round Alexandra, we did gardening in the drizzle and grey on sunday instead

[eroel]

Mark:
Usually I have a reverse situation, because my images with the Solarmax 90 look better as processed images, than visually.
Just my ATM Daystar mounted on the 6" f/12 AP refractor, gives images that are better visually than the processed ones.
Your triple stack system gives very nice contrasty images, as your photos show.
Best regards,
Eric.

[p_zetner]

Terrific result, Mark!

Your bandpass looks to be significantly narrower than 0.5 Angstroms ... a great, upper chromospheric view!

I've had nothing but miserable (splotchy field) results when trying to stack the Lunt50 with a Daystar 0.6A.

Cheers.
Peter.

[Calavera]

Hi Mark,

I read you use only one ERF on your triple... well at my setup still all three of them are in action... so definetely something to optimize...

Could you maybe post some pics of your setup? would be very interesting.

Cheers
Chris

[T McVicar]

Wow what a busy disk! Full of details. That would have been a such a treat at the EP. Thanks for sharing

Tyson

[marktownley]

Thanks all! Much appreciated

[edobosz]

Really nice contrast on those disks Mark. Looks like this combo works well!
Ted