December 26th Ha Disk.

[highqe]

A little foggy here this morning, but burned off to a blue
sky by mid morning. Fairly good seeing as a result

Image link here
http://www.atscope.com.au/BRO/gallery585.html

[DeepSolar64]

Peter,
This image is sharp and tuned very even. Using an AP130 is going to reveal very sharp images seeing permitting but I am wondering whether you are using Meade or Pre-Meade Coronado etalons? It's been said the David Lunt Coronado Tuscon etalons tune more evenly and give a more uniform disc than the later Meade Coronado etalons. Your discs are evenly tuned and illuminated. Very nicely done!!

James

[highqe]

Ta. I am using a pre-Meade i.e. Lunt SM90 (not tunable) and a post Meade 90mm (tunable) in the double stack.
Indeed the Meade eatlon sadly does not have the same contrast as the Lunt. That said, I've found front mounted etalons
have very even illumination across a wide field compared to rear mounted types.

Tuning the pair is not too difficult.

I simply bump up the exposure and use high contrast gamma to center the "hot-spot"
in the middle of the disk. I'll then turn off any in-camera gamma correction and expose to around 95% saturation
using Firecapture's intensity histogram.

A recent change in my image train was to replace the BF30 ITF (which was "rusting") with a Beloptik ITF.
It lowered the bandpass and improved contrast significantly. Highly recommended.

[DeepSolar64]

Peter,
The new Coronado SolarMax III series have both of their etalons mounted externally. I really wonder how they do compared to the SolarMax II etalons. One of the SMII's is an internal etalon.

Meade Coronado still is not selling the SMIII etalons separately from the scope to the best of my knowledge and the SMII stuff is slowly dwindling down. The SMII line is slowly being phased out in favor of the SMIII line. The scopes are already hard to find new.

I have heard a lot of good things about Beloptik.

James

[MAURITS]

Beautiful detailed FD Peter.

[Montana]

A magnificent disc Peter!

Alexandra

[rigel123]

Excellent disk Peter

[ffellah]

Terrific desk Peter, prominences and all !

Franco

[MapleRidge]

Superb FD image Peter

Brian