Tangerine in the Trees - 4th January

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marktownley
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Tangerine in the Trees - 4th January

Post by marktownley »

Imageha-fd by Mark Townley, on Flickr

More of an opportunity to try out some new kit rather than go for a decent image of the sun here, but also the first chance to image for many weeks! The day after solar perihelion there was a brief gap in the ever so persistent cloud we seem to have been graced with for months and I had a brief window before the sun started to drift back into the tree line and low sky haze. I have just had a Skywatcher AZ Gti Alt Az mount, a dinky little thing that can be picked up with one hand that is controlled via wifi. With a payload of 5kg I figured it would be an ideal grab and go mount for when there's not much time available. Today I tried it with my Technosky 60mm f6 with a Lunt 50 etalon. I was also trying out my new full disk camera - a PGR Grasshopper 3 9.1Mp with the Sony ICX814 chip; this camera offers a chip size of 3376x2704 pixels, as a result I also used a Coronado 2x cemax barlow to fill up the chip with the solar image. The camera allows a full disk up to about 1000mm focal length so will have some interesting possibilities. I was pleased that absolutely no tilt was needed with the camera. Clouds had already started to drift back so there was little time to concentrate on tuning the etalon, but it did reveal AR2732, an equatorial spot from the tail end of cycle 24, a few small proms were also visible. Just nice to see our star for a change!


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Re: Tangerine in the Trees - 4th January

Post by MapleRidge »

Hi Mark...

The sun through the tree limbs looks pretty cool, and better than no image at all with the weather you have been experiencing. Hope the new mount and camera live up to expectations, and from the first samples they look good.

Brian


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Re: Tangerine in the Trees - 4th January

Post by marktownley »

Thanks Brian. The new mount is definitely a lot more wobbly than my pier mounted EQ6 so came as a bit of a shock initially, but keeping it in the context it is designed for it's more than acceptable. It's also portable enough for airline travel which leads to other possibilities too.


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Re: Tangerine in the Trees - 4th January

Post by Montana »

Nice shot Mark, it blows up nice and big on Flickr. At least the AR was nicely tucked in between a twig :) :hamster:

Where is the Sun these days? I guess this time of year it must be consistently cloudy as it took 3 years to get enough points for my analemma to look decent but after 4 tries I still haven't got 21st/22nd December (another failure this year). It maybe too late now as the houses are at first floor stage now and rapidly encroaching on my solar view so I may never complete my analemma.

Alexandra


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Re: Tangerine in the Trees - 4th January

Post by FMEnage »

Very nice setup and image with the no-tilt camera to boot ! Mark


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Re: Tangerine in the Trees - 4th January

Post by Carbon60 »

Nice first light... you have to take what you can get at this time of the year..... even through the trees! My scope was set up at the end of our street, in the road, in order to capture some rays the other day, just to try out my new kit.

That's an impressive camera. Looking forward to seeing more when the better conditions prevail.

Stu.


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Re: Tangerine in the Trees - 4th January

Post by marktownley »

Thanks all. If I set up my scope at the end of our street Stu someone would nick it or start throwing stones at it. The nice big full disks are what attracted me to this camera, in good seeing with larger apertures in CaK for example it could get pretty interesting. Having no tilt in Ha certainly brought a smile to my face, I hope it's like that in CaK too. Just a waiting game again now, both for clear skies and also the sun getting higher in the sky.


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