Ha Full Disk - Sundays Sun 26th Feb

[marktownley]

The sky kinda cleared yesterday afternoon - the eastern half of the sky (where the sun wasn't) was lovely and deep blue, however the western part of the sky was a thick milky haze. Took a while for me to wait just for it to become vaguely constant (if not good) transparency so I could get this imaging run in. To put it in context, on saturday in clear skies, I was imaging at 1/120s, whereas yesterday was 1/77s, so quite a difference! Processing wise this image responded brilliantly and was done with I-USM, SS just generated lots of noise! Just shows the ideal processing technique and style for a particular image is dependant on quite a few variables!

I actually bothered to accurately measure the focal length I was imaging at with the barlow i'm using and found it was 1.9x (compared to the 2x its supposed to be!) - so this was done with the DS40 @ f19.95 (1.9x420mm fl) - lets call it f20 for arguments sake! 6 pane mosaic taken with DMK31...


ha full disk b&w by Mark Townley, on Flickr


ha full disk colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Hope you like!

Mark

[andreahaku]

Really features rich images.
Very well done. Let's hope for more sunny days!

[marktownley]

Thanks guys!

Hi Apollo, shooting through the haze / thin cloud definitely didn't help things - when I saw the histogram for the raw image it was all compressed - all the highlights were greyed out and skewed towards the mids, all the shadows were greyed out and skewed towards the mids. Stretching this out in post processing doesn't do much for my furry sun presentation! :whistle:

[Richard]

Nice to any pics with the weather we have been having, looked fine yesterday, set up and thin clouds that tirned into thick clouds then haze and mist later...ho hom....
Nice shots by the way Mark....

[Cschur]

Way cool shot Mark. You have overcome your weather obstacles and came out a winner!

[marktownley]

Thanks Richard & Chris!

I'm really looking forward to when the sun is a bit higher in the sky, clear skies AND good seeing - ahhh, that will be nice. My lil' scope has taken on some pretty radical mods since the new year and with good conditions should really let these show through. :silly:

[marktownley]

I notice you lost alot of the furred detail on the inner limb, any idea whats going on there?

I'll have another go at the data this evening a see if there's anything to tease out...

[Derek Klepp]

Very nice Mark always look forward to your disc shots

[marktownley]

Thanks Derek! I'm hoping it might clear up this afternoon and that I can get off work early to image - lot's of hope! :whistle:

[Montana]

Fantastic to see your images Mark, very soft but still very beautiful, especially at original size in Flickr. I am a fan of your colour!

Good luck this afternoon, just steel grey here.

Regards
Alexandra