Interestingly though the 'haze' was fairly consistent across the face of the sun, where you don't see the bands of differening density, rather the percentage figure on the histogram on firecapture just went up and down over time compared to its absolute value. This is good, as it means you can unleash one of the little known super weapons of Firecapture, the 'AutoHisto'. This is really simple to use and also very effective, set your desired exposure with a little positive gain, then enable autohisto as in shot below, set the maximum percentage value you want the histogram to peak at and away you go. Firecapture then automatically adjusts the gain value to keep the histogram value constant, it's very effective when variable transparency is an issue. If you don't use it / know about it give it a try, it's also very effective in animations when you start off when the sun is low and gets higher in the sky getting brighter as it does through less atmospheric extinction.
- auto-histo.jpg (326.52 KiB) Viewed 3742 times
Ha-FD-DS-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr
Ha-FD-DS-colour by Mark Townley, on FlickrSwitching over to the SM90 double stacked with the Quark I set out to do some exploring of the points of interest on the disk, and first off AR12759 which has been keeping us amused over the past week or so:
ar12759-ha-ds-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr
ar12759-ha-ds-colour by Mark Townley, on FlickrOver on the opposite limb the region of activity, certainly at this stage, seems to be a bit of a damp firework, maybe it will pick up as it slowly becomes geo-effective?
Bright-spot-ha-ds-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr
Bright-spot-ha-ds-colour by Mark Townley, on FlickrThen to the south pole, and what I intially thought was a dust bunny (and spent time trying to blow off) when doing the full disk:
polar-prom-ha-ds-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr
polar-prom-ha-ds-colour by Mark Townley, on FlickrAnd I ended the Ha run of a mid disk shot, where there were lots of brightpoints and little loops when you look carefully:
mid-sun-ha-ds--bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr
mid-sun-ha-ds--colour by Mark Townley, on FlickrThen I turned my attention to the other end of the spectrum and CaK, expecting the haze just not to be on my side, I couldn't have been more wrong. The quality values in AS3 of the final stacked images in AS3 were up in the 900's, compared to say 200-300 for todays Ha closeups (these are normally 400-500 in no haze). Scope was the ED80 stopped down to 60mm. First off the full disk.
CaK-Full-Disk-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr
CaK-Full-Disk-colour by Mark Townley, on FlickrThen swapping cameras for the IMX174 and the 3x ED revelation barlow lens (only £20 here!!! https://www.astroboot.co.uk/search.php?needle=3x+barlow ), starting off with our departing active region, maybe one small pore, but still plage now.
ar12759-cak-close-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr
ar12759-cak-close-colour by Mark Townley, on FlickrThen to the other limb again, and no pores at this point, just plage.
bright-spok-cak-close-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr
bright-spok-cak-close-colour by Mark Townley, on FlickrAnd a look at the south pole for any faculae that may be there:
south-pole-CaK-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr
south-pole-CaK-colour by Mark Townley, on FlickrAnd just to complete the set a bit of mid disk for good measure...
mid-disk-cak-close-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr
mid-disk-cak-close-colour by Mark Townley, on FlickrSorry so many! Not sure what today will bring todays haze is most definitely more like high cloud and most definitely more variable in it's transparency, could be more of a challenge. Whatever you're doing this weekend, stay safe and anjoy yourselves...
Mark
