SolarChat!

I have to say that I am amazed at the ease of use with an ASI290 I bought on a NEAF sale. My goal is realtime viewing of CaK since I cannot see it. I guess I will end up getting pulled into imaging. But even with just the ASI capture utility, with my PC in the bright sunlight so I could not focus well, my view blew away my R2 image. Not shown in these images well, but the light bridge (not sure if that is what it is called) in the umbra was obvious on the PC.

These are single raw frames on a 70MM Pronto, Lunt B1200 CaK, PST#1, ASI290. I'll figure out how to optimize later. Oh, the large slightly darker regions on the disk are actually passing high clouds not NR or inherent unevenness. Can't wait to put it on a bigger scope, block the sunlight for the PC, figure out FireCapture.

George

Very nice first results, George

Franco

Looks great George!

That's a good result George from your new toy! I'm very much feeling the urge to get one of these cameras; fast frame rate and small pixels optimised for f15 has potential for some closeup CaK and white light views.

Thanks, guys. Those are pretty much my first astronomical images, other than the R2 video and iPhone snaps at the eyepiece. I cannot imagine the difficulty of film.

The cameras are still on sale, and if you call High Point, they may still subtract the additional NEAF discount (but I guess this won't work for UK).

George

The UK has an 'Easter sale' on ZWO cameras till the end of the month, i'm tempted by one...

I did some modelling of my different sensors and setups here https://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/ to give me an idea the sort of FOV the asi290 would give me...

Not only FOV that counts in this case Mark. The IMX has 3.75µm pixels. So with the TAl to get same resolution you would need 1.3x barlow limiting the FOV again. (For me that 290 and the TAL at f/10 looks a good choice. (Maybe undersampled in blue,but red should be ok fro Nyquist. Altthough tendency seems to be to go higher these days ...)

Paul

I stacked about 7 frames and let Autostakkert do its default sharpening. I have a lot to learn about processing and imaging, but I like that it seems to have information almost down to the pixel level, even in the ASI290 at f/7 (92mm). Looking at my best single raw frame, it seems real. Only 7 frames because I didn't know what I was doing and only collected 10 at a time.

George

Wow! that's a super start!!


Alexandra

Looks good George!