How I orient my camera ...

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How I orient my camera ...

Post by rsfoto »

... for imaging the Sun

Hi,

I will try to explain how I orient my camera so you get the orientation of the Sun corresponding to the grid of Tilting Sun.

OK, I am in the northern Hemisphere. Below a hand drawing (not very nice) but I guess understandable.

I Stand behind my scope pointing to north. Your camera chip TOP must point to the right when the Sun is imaged in the western Part of the Sky e.g. you rotate the camera 90°clockwise.

If I image the Sun in the Eastern part the camera chip TOP must point to the left e.g I rotate the camera 90° counterclockwise.

The above explanation is only valid for straight through imaging.

Camera_Orientation_Sun_001.jpg
Camera_Orientation_Sun_001.jpg (926.5 KiB) Viewed 7188 times

For a Herschel Wedge it is the opposite as a prism only depicts the image upside down.

¿ Am I correct ?

Of course pay attention to perfect orthogonality, Thanks

Next

In the moment you use a diagonal the Sun image is depicted reversal right to left and upside down. So and now comes the hard part and fiddle out how your camera should point :lol:

Happy guessing :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
Last edited by rsfoto on Tue Mar 24, 2020 3:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.


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Re: How to correctly orient your camera ...

Post by DeepSolar64 »

Rainer,
How does this apply to visual? I suppose only in the fact that the eye replaces the camera. The Coronado SolarMax only reverses right to left but does not invert north/south.

A SolarMax 40/60/70/90 has an erect image but flipped right to left –tick only ‘Flip image horizontally’.

https://www.astroleague.org/files/u220/ ... ctions.pdf

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Re: How to correctly orient your camera ...

Post by Merlin66 »

I rely on the telescope movements to confirm the directions in the FOV.
Using the SW hand controller at slew rate 2 allows the solar image to be moved N-S (confirmed earlier by actual telescope movement direction)
E-W can be established by stopping the drive and watch the drift direction of of the solar disk - it drifts to the west.
Once established (for your various configurations of diagonal, straight thru etc ) use a piece of masking tape to prepare an index position for the future.


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Re: How to correctly orient your camera ...

Post by marktownley »

Lets give this thread some attention here and then will post in the reference library later when discussion has died down.


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Re: How to correctly orient your camera ...

Post by Montana »

Hi Rainer,
Sadly I cannot fathom what you mean from your sketch? however yesterday I tried out my theory properly for the first time and I have now directly compared mine to yours and it seems we correlate pretty close.

What I did for all my Baader Herschel wedge, Lunt CaK diagonal and my Solarscope straight through (on an equatorial mount). Set up and switch to solar tracking. With the camera loose in my hand, press the up and down arrow keys of the hand controller, turn camera slowly left and right until movement was exactly up and down to the keys, fix camera in place. Not all left and rights were correct due to wedges but the movements with the keys made the camera move exactly up and down or left and right in a straight way in the video feed.

Here is with tilting Sun added (many thanks to your help). I think it matches yours from the 22nd? so this is another way to orientate for tilting Sun. I guess you could do this with your head also (for visual). Keep twisting your head until the arrow keys on the handset move the Sun directly up and down left or right in a straight manner?
Hydrogen alpha full disc 2020-03-22 a tilting Sun.jpg
Hydrogen alpha full disc 2020-03-22 a tilting Sun.jpg (301.02 KiB) Viewed 7157 times
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Re: How to correctly orient your camera ...

Post by rsfoto »

Hi Alexandra,

Yes, I would say you have now the correct inclination and your cameras position.

Now just look how your camera is fitted on the rear of the scope and I guess you will understand my explanation.

Sorry I can not give hints when using a diagonal.

At the moment there are quite enough details to get a comparison to my images.

Rainer


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Re: How to correctly orient your camera ...

Post by rsfoto »

Merlin66 wrote: Mon Mar 23, 2020 5:15 am I rely on the telescope movements to confirm the directions in the FOV.
Using the SW hand controller at slew rate 2 allows the solar image to be moved N-S (confirmed earlier by actual telescope movement direction)
E-W can be established by stopping the drive and watch the drift direction of of the solar disk - it drifts to the west.
Once established (for your various configurations of diagonal, straight thru etc ) use a piece of masking tape to prepare an index position for the future.

Hi Ken,

Allright but that helps only for setting up your camera orthogonal as good as possible to the moving of the RA and DEC axis but that does not mean that you will image the Sun in a correct orientation ...

For a correct orientation of the Sun you need to rotate the camera into a correct position, if you are too lazy to rotate after processing, or later after processing rotate your Sun image clockwise or counterclockwise to get the Tilting Sun position.

After that you can rotate your Sun image to get it conform to SDO images. SDO always presents the images with the Sun's North pole at Top and East at left. The rotation angle is the one Tilting Sun calculates. That is what I did yesterday with my H-alpha image in order to label the facula to the belonging cycle.

BTW this is only valid for Equatorial mounts and not Alt / Azi mounts. How it works for Alt / Azi mounts Sorry I can not tell anything ... but Tilting Sun also calculates it for that type of mounts.

Rainer


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Re: How to correctly orient your camera ...

Post by Merlin66 »

Rainer,
""Allright but that helps only for setting up your camera orthogonal as good as possible to the moving of the RA and DEC axis but that does not mean that you will image the Sun in a correct orientation ...""
Don't understand..
The solar image in the FOV ends up orientated with North at the top and E-W to match. This corresponds to Tilting Sun orientation/ Gong etc.


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Re: How to correctly orient your camera ...

Post by rsfoto »

Merlin66 wrote: Mon Mar 23, 2020 9:29 pm Rainer,
""Allright but that helps only for setting up your camera orthogonal as good as possible to the moving of the RA and DEC axis but that does not mean that you will image the Sun in a correct orientation ...""
Don't understand..
The solar image in the FOV ends up orientated with North at the top and E-W to match. This corresponds to Tilting Sun orientation/ Gong etc.
Hi Ken,

Sorry, now I do not understand. If I would rotate my camera using the top of the chip rotated 90° counterclockwise as I do it now my images would not be according to the Tilting Sun images or I would need to rotate the image later after processing.

Anyhow anybody can do it as they want. Somebody asked for an advice and I put it down as I do it ..

I admit the title " How to correctly orient your camera ... " is wrong.

I should have put the title " How I orient my camera when imaging the Sun ... "

But OK. Important is to have the Sun image according to some logical orientation be it Tilting Sun or SDO and so we can compare details ... unfortunately a lot of peple have not cared about it but that is also relative as everybody can do however he wants to do it ... :mrgreen:

Rainer


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Re: How to correctly orient your camera ...

Post by Merlin66 »

Rainer,
OK.
I was assuming most of us used EQ mounts and by aligning the camera FOV to the RA and Dec axis, it ensures the Solar image has North to the top as per TiltingSun and all the references.
I agree 100% that we should set a "good" example and orientate our images correctly.....


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Re: How to correctly orient your camera ...

Post by Carbon60 »

I use the same process as Alexandra.

I use the movement arrows up and down on the hand controller and rotate the camera until the Sun in the frame on the screen also moves up and down parallel to the edges of the frame. Depending on whether the setup is a straight through, or diagonal mirror reflected, it will be necessary to correct when processing by vertically flipping the image, or not. Of course, the mount has to be correctly oriented and levelled at the start.

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Re: How to correctly orient your camera ...

Post by marktownley »

Exactly the same as Stu and Alexandra for me too.


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Re: How I orient my camera ...

Post by rsfoto »

Hi,

OK, last try to explain why I rotate my camera 90° ...

In this website https://www.spaceacademy.net.au/library ... lorien.htm you can see the Sun and Earth and their respective axes.

Sun_Earth_axis.gif
Sun_Earth_axis.gif (13.03 KiB) Viewed 7078 times

Now I put my telescope on the Earth and point to the Sun. The chip of my camera will depict the East from the sun pointing to the top of my chip and the North pole will be pointing to the right side of my chip.

If I rotate my chip 90 ° clockwise the North pole of the Sun will be pointing to the top of my chip ...

But as I have written before I found out the correct orientation of my SUn images by comparing details many many years ago and since then I do not change it.

Sorry if some people thought I am imposing a camera orientation here against their will ... but it was asked so many times and I thought it might help to explain how I do it.

Rainer


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Re: How I orient my camera ...

Post by Montana »

Can you take a photo to demonstrate (start to finish) :)

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Re: How I orient my camera ...

Post by rsfoto »

Montana wrote: Tue Mar 24, 2020 4:26 pm Can you take a photo to demonstrate (start to finish) :)

Alexandra
¿?


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Re: How I orient my camera ...

Post by Montana »

Of your camera position on the telescope (with a regular camera) :)

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Re: How I orient my camera ...

Post by rsfoto »

Montana wrote: Tue Mar 24, 2020 7:56 pm Of your camera position on the telescope (with a regular camera) :)

Alexandra
Hi Alexandra,

Aha and below you see it same as my shabby drawing :mrgreen:


Mount pointing north and camera rotate clockwise 90° for imaging in the West. If the Sun is in the East I rotate the camera 90° counterclockwise, but as I never image to the East, there is the big city with its high hot air so no good.

Sun_Orient_01.jpg
Sun_Orient_01.jpg (333.36 KiB) Viewed 7043 times

Mount imaging the Sun which is in the Western hemisphere. Telscopes on East side, counterweights on West side and as you can see the camera is parallel to the RA axis pointing with the top of the chip to the North pole.

Sun_Orient_02.jpg
Sun_Orient_02.jpg (300.86 KiB) Viewed 7043 times

and here you can see how the chip is sitting inside my camera and now with more dust bunnies :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

Sun_Orient_03.jpg
Sun_Orient_03.jpg (265.08 KiB) Viewed 7043 times

Rainer


Rainer


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Re: How I orient my camera ...

Post by Montana »

Oh I see!!!!! just taken me three days to get it :lol: :lol:

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Re: How I orient my camera ...

Post by Montana »

Just adding in the link 'How to add Tilting Sun ' graphic onto your image in Photoshop

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=27408&p=247633&hili ... un#p247633

Alexandra


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