The seeing yesterday was not too great for 180 mm aperture, but I recorded >200 videos and got some good stacks, and even a usable animation. Taken with Intes M715 with Blackfly S (IMX 273) camera, Baader ND 3.8 solar film + Solar Continuum (10 nm) filter, stacked in AS!3 and processed with ImPPG.
- frame_00074.png (711.37 KiB) Viewed 1267 times
I had L-R deconvolution disabled (it doesn't work that well on granulation), instead used 2 layers of unsharp mask (one for sharpening, another for slight denoising).
Animation: 80-second intervals (20 s when recording, but decimated 4:1 & blended together for the final animation), 1:12 h total:
I didn't use my SSM last year due to malfunction (which I didn't want to spend time on). It turned out to be just Arduino loose in its socket - I gave it a push and we're back up and running this season
Here are the readings for the above animation's duration (the thicker line is the running 30-second average):
- seeing_ses.png (274 KiB) Viewed 1267 times
and for the still image shown in the beginning:
- seeing_74.png (41.47 KiB) Viewed 1267 times
One might ask: "how did you manage to get sub-arcsecond details if the seeing was mostly much worse?". But remember: an SSM gives a seeing value averaged over the whole solar disc and a certain time period (here: 1 s). There might still be moments when fragments of the FOV are undistorted for a small fraction of a second, and when taking 3k-frame videos at 3 ms exposure as I did here, this gives the stacker enough material to work with.
Bonus track: M1.0 flare in the same active region (90 mm refractor + Lunt 50 etalon, 30-second intervals, 40 min. total):
My software:
Stackistry — an open-source cross-platform image stacker
ImPPG — stack post-processing and animation alignment
My images
SW Mak-Cass 127, ATM Hα scopes (
90 mm,
200 mm), Lunt LS50THa,
ATM SSM, ATM Newt 300/1500 mm, PGR Chameleon 3 mono (ICX445)
