Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

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marktownley
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Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by marktownley »

Despite wet weather this weekend i've been happy; having a drink in our garden on friday night at dusk and our neighbour came round to join us for a glass of wine. For years i've been asking if I can cut the top off a huge conifer tree that has been growing rampantly in her garden for too long; from about 2 - 5pm from march till october the tree blocks my afternoon view of the sun, only in July did the sun top the tree. I'd offered all sorts - i'd pay for a tree surgeon to come in and do the work, i'd pay for her fencing to be done in return for me topping the tree - to no avail. Then, all of a sudden on friday night she says "I can see why you want to cut the tree down it blocks the stars" - well I don't look at the stars, only our star, but hey, i'll take the logic! So, for the past 2 days i've been chopping down and chopping up said tree. It now presents a much lower height that now even gives me a window on the sun in the afternoons in the winter time! A winner!

Even more of winner today, the weather forecast was for grey and drizzle, when I got up I looked at Sat24 to see the cloud that was over me was about to pass with clear blue skies imminently rolling in. Bonus! I could see on GONG we had 2 emerging flux regions so was keen to see what I could find.

Starting with the full disk, Double stacking the Lunt 50 etalon with the Daystar Quark and the FLIR GH3 ICX916M camera. First thing that was apparent was the seeing was awful, so, I just rolled off a load of full disks with the view of processing and presenting the best, which, is below:

ImageHa-FD-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

ImageHa-FD-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

I was keen to get a closer view, but the SSM was telling me seeing was going between 3 and 8 arc seconds, with very fleeting moments when it dropped below 3. I decided to go into fully automated mode with the SM90 that I was double stacking with the Daystar Quark; using the SSM plugin in firecapture, and the hinode guider to lock on target (which it does very well), I set the capture threshold at 3 arc sec, with the discard at 4 arc seconds. Not much was recording very quick so I just left it to it and came back every 20 minutes or so for a new target area.

First off the emerging flux regions; the one closest to the limb brightened quite a bit from when I took the full disk, and the one in the right hand side displaying pores in white light as seen in Pepes images where the flux tubes emerge from the photosphere, looping with small connecting magnetic arcs in the chromosphere.

ImageEmerging-Flux-Regions-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

ImageEmerging-Flux-Regions-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Over on the opposite limb the remnants of easters active regions still are visible as turbulent plage and small filaments marking magnetic fields. Wonder if we'll still recognise it in 2 weeks time?

ImageEx-AR-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

ImageEx-AR-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Inspired by Christians shot I took a look towards the solar north pole and sure enough you can see the brighter points of polar faculae, normally visible as a photospheric feature shining up into the chromosphere.

ImageNorth-Pole-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

ImageNorth-Pole-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Hoping tomorrow morning is bright like todays. Hope you like these.

Mark


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Re: Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by Starry Jack »

Wow. Lovely shots and helpful narrative.


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Re: Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by MAURITS »

VERY nice Mark, Tak sharp.


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Re: Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by ffellah »

A very nice set, Mark. Very nice views of the active regions. The FD also came out very well. You are really working that SM90...

Franco


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Re: Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by MapleRidge »

Hi Mark...

Great news that you have recovered your view from the tree :o

The entire set of images are very sharp, and allowing the auto capture to run paid off. Excellent work :bow

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Re: Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by Carbon60 »

Excellent news, Mark. Glad she came around in the end and agreed to have the tree chopped back.

Lovely FDs and close views.

Stu.


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Re: Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by marktownley »

Thanks everyone! pleased with how these came out, for every image that I post I take 10 images to choose the best one from. I then just view the final stacked images in AS3 to get the quality reading of each image and then post process the one that comes out of the batch with the highest quality reading. I wish AS3 would allow the images final quality reading to be written in the file name to allow to work out the sharpest image from a batch quickly - I did email the guy about this at one point but never got a reply.


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Re: Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by FeroT »

Beautiful full discs Mark. Can you please describe in more detail your setup for it? What lens is used with Lunt 50 etalon with Quark double stacked? thanks in advance

Frank


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Re: Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by marktownley »

FeroT wrote: Tue Aug 06, 2019 6:34 am Beautiful full discs Mark. Can you please describe in more detail your setup for it? What lens is used with Lunt 50 etalon with Quark double stacked? thanks in advance

Frank
Thanks Frank. The setup is as follows - Lunt50 etalon, Tecnosky 60mm / f6 scope, 2" diagonal, Daystar Quark, Baader 0.7x solar telecompressor and the FLIR GH3 ICX916M camera. With the right spacing of the camera chip relative to the back face of the telecompressor I get a full disk in one frame.


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Re: Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by Montana »

:hamster: :hamster: :hamster: amazing what a glass of wine can do, how many did you give her :lol: with vodka mixed in?

These are great Mark, always very interesting to read your posts as they are not only excellent images but also informative :bow :bow

Alexandra


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Re: Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by Valery »

Hi Mark,

Congrats with your victory in the trees cut-off war!

Excellent images, I like them.

BTW You inspired me to see more deeply what is still hidden in your best image.
And I found a lot more. If you don't mind, I will post my findings.

Valery


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Re: Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by marktownley »

Thanks Alexandra, ironically later last night I was quite startled to see the crescent moon in the sky until I realised it is always there this time of year, just behind said tree - no more! mwuhahahaha!!!

Thanks Valery, sure, post away, i'll send you the original TIF file too if you like?


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Re: Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by Valery »

Here is the image I processed a bit further to my taste. :)

The scale is 115% to the original image from here.

Hope you like it, Mark.

Valery
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Re: Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by marktownley »

Looks good Valery! How did you process it?


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Re: Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by FeroT »

Thanks Mark for the info, I will try to make a similar setup, as I am still struggling to get a full disk in one frame . Is there a photo of the setup on your Flickr page?

Frank


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Re: Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by marktownley »

Hi Frank, no, but i'll take a pic for you next time i'm out doing a full disk.
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Re: Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by FeroT »

Thanks Mark, I appreciate your effort. I couldn't find online the exact camera specs of the FLIR GH3 ICX916M camera. The chip is different on those online. Can you give me the pixel size and number here?
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Re: Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by marktownley »



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Re: Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by FeroT »

Hi Mark, I've looked at it as it is a 9.1M pixel mono chip ICX814 9 FPS, not ICX916M correct?
Thanks again for the info.

Frank


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Re: Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by marktownley »

My mistake - that's the one Frank


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Re: Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by marktownley »

Hi Frank,

Here's the Ha setup in visual mode. A 25mm Cemax eyepiece gives plenty of space around the disk for proms.

Mark

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Re: Monday Sunshine and the Trees Be Gone! - 5th August

Post by Derek Klepp »

Mark about time you got that tree sorted. As an aside its been a while since I viewed any of your pics and I must say those closeups look really good.
Cheers Derek


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