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Wobbly Wednesday 25th March

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2020 8:08 am
by marktownley
We've had clear skies all week here for days now, and a lack of planes means there are no contrails and the sky is blue not milky. This is really good for CaK imaging and even at the scale of todays images (60mm) the spicule ring around the sun is visible, even if not well resolved. The seeing though on wednesday was not good with the temperature rising from below freezing to mid teens celcius over several hours, and for the CaK certainly, I would have probably got better results with my 40mm scope.

ImageCak-FD-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

ImageCak-FD-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Closeups were with the 60mm and 3x barlow, IMX174 chipped camera.

Imagecak-ne-limb-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Imagecak-ne-limb-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Imagecak-w-limb-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Imagecak-w-limb-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

One constant is the ability of the double stacked 50mm Ha setup to cut through whatever seeing durge is thrown at it, and yesterday was no exception. The disk is quiet! But there were a few temporal emerging flux regions.

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

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

Turning to the SM90 double stacked with the Quark, I was fighting the seeing with the increased exposure but this shot of the flux regions came out ok.

Imagemid-disk-ds90-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Imagemid-disk-ds90-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Realising I was going nowhere quickly with the DS90 I dropped down into single stacked mode, a 2.5x barlow and the IMX174 camera again, ramping up the gain and keeping the exposure short cut through the seeing to my surprise and yesterdays proms revealed themselves in glory.

Imageprom-NE-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Imageprom-NE-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Imageprom-sw-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Imageprom-sw-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Imageprom-w-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Imageprom-w-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Phew, managed to get them all processed and up here before todays session starts. Lets see what it brings!

Mark

Re: Wobbly Wednesday 25th March

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2020 9:28 am
by AndiesHandyHandies
Hi

In the Mak 180 I could see the prom in the last image similar to your last image.

I could see two jets either side with filigrees in between. A couple of bright spots.

I have done a temperature analysis which I will post. The Collimator/Baader 35nm are at 50C in the Mak. Secondary cooler than I expected.

Andrew

Re: Wobbly Wednesday 25th March

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2020 10:54 am
by JochenM
Everyone single one of those looks very nice, Mark. Well done.

Your CaK looks pretty sharp considering the current conditions.

Re: Wobbly Wednesday 25th March

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2020 3:16 pm
by marktownley
Thanks Andrew, thanks Jochem.

Re: Wobbly Wednesday 25th March

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2020 4:08 pm
by stef41
excellent series!
a pleasure for the eye :)

with kind regards,
stéphane

Re: Wobbly Wednesday 25th March

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2020 5:03 pm
by DeepSolar64
Mark,
Very nice prominence detail!

James

Re: Wobbly Wednesday 25th March

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2020 8:35 pm
by marktownley
Thank you Stephane and James :)

Re: Wobbly Wednesday 25th March

Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 6:41 am
by Carbon60
Very nice images, Mark. You always provide such interesting commentary, explaining the reasoning behind your choice of equipment.

Stu.

Re: Wobbly Wednesday 25th March

Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 7:11 am
by Martin_S
Great Imaging Mark. I too have noticed here in Brisbane that the absence of jet aircraft flying overhead and possibly less air pollution has certainly cleaned the skies up, especially at night. My night skies over the last week have been really dark as opposed to the usual milky white airglow that I usually encounter.

Martin

Re: Wobbly Wednesday 25th March

Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 7:43 am
by krakatoa1883
Not much stuff to see in these days however great images, Mark. CaK is superb.

Re: Wobbly Wednesday 25th March

Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 7:51 am
by marktownley
Thanks guys for the kind comments - foggy here so far this morning.

Re: Wobbly Wednesday 25th March

Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 6:48 pm
by MAURITS
A great set of images Mark, nicely processed.

Re: Wobbly Wednesday 25th March

Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2020 12:01 pm
by Montana
Always your images look perfect to me :bow :hamster: I am interested in your perfect prominence shots. I find the ASI174 very noisy and your prominences are near perfect even though you say you increased the gain right up. How many images do you capture and stack to get rid of the noise especially when you have increased the gain?

Alexandra

Re: Wobbly Wednesday 25th March

Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2020 12:18 pm
by marktownley
ThanksMaurits and Alexandra. I was running with the gain on 50% on the slider in FC, I did a run of 2000 images and then stacked 128 of them. The camera is being powered via battery though, not USB power.