Sun @ 120mm 4th April

[marktownley]

I'm really pleased with my new pier; realised today I could be out setup and observing just an hour after sunrise, and with MeteoBlue predicting 1" seeing I decided to gamble. I started off with CaK at 100mm and this was working ok, so decided to go for 120mm @ f28 with the IMX174 camera. First off in CaK, then as I could see the seeing rolling off I switched to the more seeing friendly Ha.

new-plage-cak-120-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

new-plage-cak-120-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

New-plage-Ha-120-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

New-plage-Ha-120-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

old-plage-cak-120-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

old-plage-cak-120-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Old-plage-ha-120-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Old-plage-ha-120-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

New-AR-Cak-120-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

New-AR-Cak-120-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

New-AR-Ha-120-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

New-AR-Ha-120-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Not much done with these apart from a sharpen in ImPPG and some colour in PS. The Ha was with the Quark, the CaK with a triple stack sortie of CaK PST filters (it's first outing) - they definitely aren't configured right here as the chromospheric fringe is gone, and all it gave me over DS CaK is increased exposure time. With clear skies all day I did settle on a TS CaK configuration that gave improved results, but by then I was running at 60mm ~f40 with the drop in seeing. I will get these processed, but after completely running after disk space my laptop has been whirring away stacking for several hours now.

Today was nice weather 15c and blue skies, and after imaging enjoyed just looking for several hours visually with the DS90 watching the subtle changes of our star all afternoon. All good fun! More images to come, but I have to process them!

Mark

[rsfoto]

Hi Mark,

Well done.

[arnedanielsen]

Beautiful work Mark!

Best regards,
Arne

[marktownley]

Thanks guys, here's the full disk taken at 60mm f16

CaK-FD-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

CaK-FD-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

[Boso36]

Good work, Mark !
Very impressive. You have a good setup and obviously very knowledgeable and skilful.
Can you clarify, please, how your CaK setup is ? I thought you would need a Daystar Quark CaK eyepiece filter ? Are there other setups for CaK. Sorry I am not very knowledgeable in CaK imaging.

Not sure where your pier is, but it looks like its working for you.

Clear skies.
Magnus

[EGRAY_OBSERVATORY]

Very well done, Mark and yes of course, early morning seeing is usually better than later-on, but I at least like my ZZZZ's even though occasionally i will work through the night on something and then get out to the observatory for that early-time.

Thanks for describing and sharing.

Terry

[ffellah]

A very nice set, Mark. The Ha images came out really well.

Franco

[DavidP]

Nice images Mark.
The Calcium are especially sharp

[Martin_S]

Wow the hi res Cak is amazing Mark, what 120mm scope did you use?.

Martin

[DeepSolar64]

I am glad you got some sun-time today. Nice images too!

[JochenM]

Nice shots, Mark.

Will be interesting to see what you manage to squueze out of that TS CaK with a bit of tinkering (that's the fun part).

[Carbon60]

A beautiful set of images, Mark.

Stu.

[marktownley]

Thanks everyone!

Yes Jochen, it will be fun to experiment with the TS CaK, at the moment i'm not seeing a huge difference between DS Cak, just the whites are brighter and the surface seems slightly darker and slightly more textured. I seem to have lost the chromospheric fringe too. This comes at the expense of more gain needed to keep exposure short. I need to experiment with the tuning more and also play around with the order of the filters in the stack too.

Magnus, my CaK filter is one of my own construction, using Edmunds Optics filters for blockers and filters from CaK PSTs, for the closeup images this filter combo sits behind an f28 telecentric beam. All the scopes I use for CaK work are achro refractors either working at native f10 or stopped down to give me f10.

Martin, the scope is a Bresser 127/1200 refractor, stopped down to 120mm. For narrowband solar it is a bit of bargain. I may try it at full 127mm aperture for Ha next time the seeing is playing ball, but this will give the Quark a slightly faster f-ratio to work with so potentially a trade off.

In the mean time, here's the image of AR12813, same as above, but processed with the NAFE software (see the image processing section), it certainly gives more texture compared to the ImPPG view, still cant make my mind up about it...

AR12813-Ha-120-NAFE by Mark Townley, on Flickr

[marktownley]

And yesterdays Ha full disk with the DS50...

Ha-FD-DS-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Ha-FD-DS-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

[Stardust5858]

Brilliant you got your pier sorted out, so much easier for you now. Great you managed to get some data too. Cak looking good. There was an interesting filaprome too. I too managed to get some cak and ha but not processed any yet, lol. Thanks for sharing Mark.

[DeepSolar64]

Mark,
Your Ha view pretty much matched my visual view yesterday. Nice work.

James.

[MAURITS]

A lot of beautiful work Mark.

[krakatoa1883]

Fine images, great CaK detail.

[marktownley]

Thanks folks for your kind comments!