20060430 solar observation

Taken at 1640, Ranger 2x, SM40/BF10, DMK 31AF03, 876 and 875.



Full disc, ranger at prime focus:



another full disc, same raw AVIs but different approach:



The raw are two AVIs, one covering the top part and another one covering the lower part.

The first one is done by stacking two AVIs separately, and then stitch them together via Photoshop, process the stitched again by registax wavelet, and fine tune again by Photoshop.

The second one is done by stacking two AVIs together, via a common alignment point and use expand image to merge all frames together according to the common alignment point, it's then wavelet processed and fine tuned by Photshop.

Seems like by using a common alignment point, more frames are stacked together effectively for a larger area, and then allow stronger processing.

An AR875 close up, specially processed to burst contrast, may look not very natural:

20060419 1454 (HKT)

Borg 45ED, 2.5x corrector at nosepiece of DMK 31AF03, non-tracked:




Add some more shots, closeup:




One more full disc taken at 1448/1449



1458:

Jupiter with C8

Around 4:15a this morning, I put my tripod on the floor instead of on the window platform, I found that I can comfortably set my C8 on the LXD55 to point to Jupiter without major blocking.

The view on the eyepiece review that the scope was slightly out of collimation, I tried to fix it but only to make it worse, I didn't do it for long... after maybe 10 minutes, I managed to fix it but the cloud was already covering... before full coverage, I managed to see it briefly on my DMK.

I hope I will have chance to get a good pic soon. Not bad to look at the eyepiece briefly, and also to re-learn collimation.

Collimation is easy as long as you don't require yourself to collimate AND to give all the screws a firm feel... I shall give it a fine tune when chance allows.

Short solar observation

No time this morning, got a short gap this afternoon, but not enough cloud gap to capture more... just this one, prominence only, SM40/BF10, Borg 45ED, DMK:



seems like a CME is captured instead of just the tall straight prominence.

First DMK Borg45ED Jupiter

Seeing sucks... I was say it's 1/10 since it even affects 45mm aperture crazily, here's what I got, at 1/9s exposure, high gain, Borg45ED with 5x (way oversampling with small pixel size), fake color just for fun:

Observation today

Cloud come and go, only a few short cloud gap even I've tracked for the whole afternoon... here're the two which probably should be the best:





Ranger at prime focus for the surface detail shot, 2x barlows for the hedgerow.

A full disc shot:

20060401 0606 (UT) AR865 866

Low power version, SM40 performs very well at this image scale (480mm):



Transparency 5/10, seeing 2-3/10

Double size with 2x barlows:

Solar observation

Very short, to steal time actually. Seeing is 2-3/10, transparency is 5/10.

Two large AR comes out, namely 865 which is closer to centre, and 866 which is closer to the edge.

Ranger is used, no full disc shot captured for the lack of time. Since large AR are available, I used a 2x barlows to capture some AVIs at more than the theoretical limit of the SM40.

Attached is a 865, stacked with around 800 frames as a test first.. more coming.