SolarChat!

Got the SSM plugin running in Firecapture last night so was keen to have a play this morning. Conditions were milky and the seeing was up and down, after a while playing with settings I finally got something that was working for me. Just pointed the scope mid disk and let the Hinode solar guider keep things central. I also used the flat field option in firecapture which is excellent at getting rid of vignetting and dust bunnies. It all adds up to a very automated system which I can just set up and go and mooch around with other things while data is captured. Seeing was averaging at 4", best just below 2" and at worst 10"(!). Day has gone totally cloudy now, so after this mornings test of the setup i'm keen to get a run tomorrow morning (weather permitting) with better data.

Na-Hat-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Na-Hat-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Focal length is a shade over 6m, and was using a 0.7x solar telecompressor, if tomorrows seeing is better I might ditch the compressor and go for a bit more image scale.

Mark

Looks very good

Cheers buddy

Lots of detail. Will be amazing when you get better seeing
Robert

Thanks Robert. The SSM plugin allows automation for a sequence of images to be taken for animations. Not sure my seeing is ever really going to be up to it with the HaT, but leads to some interesting possibilities with my 100mm Tal refractor, now, just need some clear skies.

Great stuff Mark. I also got the plugin running. I will give a go tomorrow (weather permitting)

We should get ready for the Total Lunar Eclipse

Looking good Mark, especially for poor conditions
I have been itching to try scintillation controlled capture as well

Lovely granulation shot, Mark.
How does Firecapture do the flat-fielding?
Cheers, Peter.

Thanks guys!

Peter, You centre the scopes fov mid disk on the sun, put some plastic film / bag over the scopes aperture, click flat field button on FC and this takes a flat which it then subtracts on the fly as captures are being made. It works well.

Hi, Mark

Your setup sounds like an exciting prospect.

Lou

Never say never Mark, better seeing is bound to come sooner or later which will improve things further. Very nice results so far.

Good one, Mark. Nice granulation.

Like it.....set up, get on target, press go and take in a pint or two down the local pub. All done by the time you get back.



Stu.

Superb granulation Mark you are getting some good results now

I wish I could get Firecapture to work. Everything was fine with the old version, then that suddenly started crashing all the time when I bought battery cables from Rupert. Then I reloaded FC all again, still the same. Now gone on to latest version and it never gives me a proper frame rate unless I ditch the battery cables. With the cables it just records 65 frames then stops for various minutes, starts again then stops. It is impossible. I can't image loading a plug in for the SSM as well I would go to Genika if he would ever support my Blackfly I am not good with computers but I would love to go back to my old version of Firecapture which did nothing automatically.

Alexandra

Mark very good granulation shots.

Alexandra: don't want to go off topic here but looks more a camera/cable or software mismatch problem rather han FireCapure. Did you test this with the cable on FlyCap?

Rgrds,

Paul

Thanks everyone!

I suspect you're running x32 and x64 versions on different bits of software Alexandra, this will cause the crashes you describe. Reinstall everything with the x64 versions.

Amazing Sodium granulation, Mark !

Franco

Good that fire capture supports the SSM.
I asked to the fire capture developer some year ago for it, but he had no interest and/or time.
Is the plugin working with the SSM from Airylab?

CS
Alex

Yes, this is the Airylab SSM.

I have been unable to use my SSM with FireCapture 2.5 or version 2.6, anybody else having problems with windows 10 and FC plugins?

Nope, works without problems on W10 with FireCapture.

Paul

Paul do you have to use the C: drive path? or can it be put in any drive path?

If you are talking about the plugin that need to be placed in the folder were firecapture is installed.

from the readme
Installation
------------
- Create a folder named SSSMon in folder <FC installation folder>\plugins\x86 or <FC installation folder>\plugins\x64 (depending on Windows version)
- Copy SSSMon.jar into this folder
- Copy files jcommon-1.0.23.jar and jfreechart-1.0.19.jar from the lib folder of the installation archive into the lib folder of the FC installation folder:
- Start FireCapture
- Select SSSMon plugin in section PreProcessing (press button “None” if no plugin is selected)


Only thing I noticed is that FC the camera display can be "frozen" when FC is started with the plugin loaded. You then just have to disable/enable it again in the plugin menu

Paul

I've had no problems Randy, I think i'm using v2.5

The granulation with the Na filter is very sharp

Good to see your SSM plugin works and proves itself with the image you have presented.

Brian