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Sun 8th August

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 11:10 am
by marktownley
Spent a few hours yesterday trying to get some nice hi-res shots with the HaT, but, as usual seeing was not playing ball, and even with the SSM plugin was difficult to extract any useful data - lots of time spent and lots of data discarded. This was my best attempt of the run:

ImageAR-HAT-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

ImageAR-HAT-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

I'd been merrily facing east pretty much all of the time, and with the house behind me it came as a great surprise as a wall of cloud and rain was building to the west, so quickly I managed to grab a couple of full disks.

ImageHa-Full-Disk-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

ImageHa-Full-Disk-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

ImageCaK-Full-Disk-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

ImageCaK-Full-Disk-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

This summers solar season is rapidly drawing to a close for me - i'm off tomorrow for the long weekend doing solar outreach at the Solarsphere astronomy festival Builth Wells in Wales, but, with rain forecast all weekend I suspect will be more beer drinking and astronomy talking done instead. Next week we head off to Iceland till september, I am going to take a lil' scope with me but luggage means I will only take a whitelight filter with me, not sure how many spots will be seen - none probably but the scope will be good on a tripod for landscape views.

Mark

Re: Sun 8th August

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 2:03 pm
by Ibbo
Nice images Mark, no luck here yesterday or today for that matter.

Re: Sun 8th August

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 2:15 pm
by marktownley
Thanks Steve, today is a cloud out for me too. Time to head out for a pint of Bathams instead me thinks...

Re: Sun 8th August

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 2:26 pm
by eroel
Mark:
Beautiful session, at my place just had a few minutes in some days to get a couple of FD´s.
Best regards,
Eric.

Re: Sun 8th August

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2018 1:03 am
by marktownley
THanks Eric

Re: Sun 8th August

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2018 6:57 am
by Carbon60
Enjoy the hols, Mark and Solarbeer, I mean Solarsphere ;)

Nice FDs. With the HAT the results are just so dependent on having great seeing, as we all know with larger aperture scopes, and great seeing is only a rare treat for most of us. Still, when things do come together, it makes it all the more worthwhile. :)

Stu.

Re: Sun 8th August

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2018 7:35 am
by marktownley
Nice, I like Solarbeer, I might steal that for the weekend ;) Thanks Stu :)

You're right, with the bigger apertures things are so seeing dependent for us, the SSM plugin has really helped and I feel I can now (with enough raw data) get some usable images. I was struggling to get much at all earlier in the year, but these couple of weeks i'm pleased with some of the closeups i've gotten. I know looking at Freds, Christians and Valerys images what an 8" SCT is capable of, I need to take a holiday somewhere I can take all the kit where there is some good seeing.

Incidentally after posting yesterday about taking that lil' scope with me to Iceland I decided to look on Stellarium and see what time the moon and planets were up - I fancied a bit of lunar viewing, jupiters moons, rings of Saturn etc - Neither the moon or any of the bright planets actually rise from Akureyri this month - they stay continually below the horizon. Scrub that idea then, think I will just take some binoculars instead :D

Re: Sun 8th August

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2018 9:33 am
by Montana
I think the HaT images are great, you can definitely see the level of resolution even if the seeing was bad. Some great full discs too :bow

Have a great time at Solarsphere, if they ever did day passes then we might just come, have fun!
Have a great time in Iceland too, I never realised that the Moon wouldn't rise, I thought it was visible everywhere :shock:

Alexandra

Re: Sun 8th August

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2018 11:48 am
by ffellah
Great shots, Mark. Are the HaT at F/43 ? it looks like, as they are very close. Despite the seeing, you can still see many details. The FD's are lovely too. Enjoy Iceland, it is on my to do list in the future too.

Franco

Re: Sun 8th August

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2018 1:50 pm
by Valery
Mark,

What the etalon has been used for HiRes image? Quark or a PST etalon?

And I agree with Alexandra and Franko, that you still have a good details at the HiRes image.


My August 8 session was remarkably successful. Too bad I became so lazy to process all the movies and then prepare best shots for web publishing.

Valery

Re: Sun 8th August

Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2018 10:30 am
by marktownley
Thanks everyone!

The hi res shot was taken with the Daystar Quark with the built in 4.3x telecentric, however I am using the HaT with the Celestron 0.7x Edge HD reducer, which brings the scopes native focal length back down to f7 meaning i'm running at closer to f30. I'm getting much better results like this than at f43. Whether it is down to the seeing, not sure, but is easier to get a better image with the 0.7x reducer in place, and, also gets better results than using the 0.7x solar telecompressor after the etalon when running at f43 to bring it down to f30.

Akureyri is only about 60 miles south of the Arctic circle, and on mid summers day the sun is only below the horizon for 20 odd minutes, conversely on the winter solstice the sun is only above the horizon for a very short time. Think about the planets now - they are all in constellations way below the celestial equator so at best are flirting the horizon. If the local horizon was flat then there may be a chance of glimpsing them, but most of the populated areas in Iceland are in the lowlands, close to or at sea level, which are surrounded by the highlands, so wherever you look, generally the local horizon is elevated.

Solarsphere had a good start on Friday, with gloriously blue skies - rather windy though, blew my laptop clean off the table and also blew over 2 pints of beer :o - serious stuff! Lots of people got lots of great views - had the DS50 out taking in the full disk and with all that plage and filaments mid disk was easy for people to see, and the Quark on the ED80 taking a closer view on the proms. Today is a total cloud out, and with rain imminent the mount is going to be packed up very soon. Heavy rain for tomorrow means there will be more 'solar chat' than solar viewing taking place.

Re: Sun 8th August

Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2018 12:24 pm
by p_zetner
Nice shots, Mark despite the seeing limitations in high-res.
Hope your travels work out well.
Cheers, Peter.