20250817 Sun

It has been several months since my last imaging session.

The weather was nice occasionally, just no energy to pull out the stuff for imaging.

Glad that I did it today.  I have also taken a vlog in Cantonese, might be published one day in my youtube channel.

1521 taken with a reducer, prominence brought out by pushing the level selectively, merged with the surface detail without pushing.

1524 taken with a 2x barlows, colorised.

1525, same setting as above, it's a filament day!

1526, around with same area of the one at 1524

I guess I will be doing some more astronomy in the near future.  It's a shame to waste the weather and the equipments.

20250517 Sun (reducer finally works)

This is a test of equipment, a 1.25" 0.5x focal reducer.  It won't come to focus before, but then I remember that I have a very short 1.25" nosepiece for C mount.  It comes to focus finally.

It's easy to take a full disc shots now!  Maybe good for continuous monitoring, like making animations, I shall try later.

This is a simple two frames mosaic at prime focus.  The non-uniform illumination makes it a bit tricky, but this does not worth the effort now.

Close up with AR4087, with 2x barlows.

Solar imaging is happy in Scottish summer.

20250513 Sun

Didn't pull out my setup for quite long, the thing couldn't get focus properly at first for unknown reason.  I removed the filter and insert again, things work normally then.

Those two 1.25" focal reducer did not work, they looked identical optically and physically.

The solar filter is not very useful too. 

I am going to sell the above on ebay.

1055 (UT+1), prime focus:

1106 + 1108 (UT+1),, failed mosaic at prime focus

And then finally push up the exposure to bring prominences., not well executed:

Too little practice.

A new solar season

By new season, I mean the sun goes up high enough to clear the trees.

With reducer:

With 2x barlows:

At prime focus, two frames merged:

This is my new setup, actually, it was an old setup which left unused for quite sometime.  The new solar finder is effective, the mount could hold the setup rather easily despite the very windy condition.

Love this one, except somehow I want a hand controller for faster slewing.

20241105 Sun

 Resumed imaging since suffering from sciatica.

The poor Scottish weather also a huge factor.  I found the sun was so low already and it's blocked by some trees.  So I just did an overexposure to cover up the shadows of the branches:

Need to wait until the Sun goes farther up.

I got a new sunshade for my notebook. it's actually a foldable leaves collector.  It works perfectly.

Way cheaper than a foldable sunshade for notebook but it works.

20240812 Sun

The sun is still very active.  We have a thunderstorm thuis morning but the sky cleared later in the afternoon, it's very windy, however.

1410 and 1411 (UT+1), at prime focus:

And then I insert a 2x barlows for close up:

1416 (UT+1)

1414 (UT+1)

1413 (UT+1)

Sorry about the reversed order.

I also pulled out my 8" SCT for a couple of white light shots, I guess I will want to add a color filter, say red, to reduce the disturbance from seeing but I forgot.

1433 and 1434 (UT+1)

20240810 Sun

Very active sun, glad that I did some imaging.

1136 (UT+1), taken with a reducer:

1139 (UT+1), taken at -prime focus:

Cloud moving around, I have to catch the cloud gaps, I actually waited for more than an hour to get two clips.

20240731 H-alpha Sun

The Scottish summer is nearly non-existent this year.  We finally got some sunshine and I pulled out my gear to take a few shots.

1319 + 1320 mosaic of two frames to show the prominences, very active and lovely.

And then 1310 + 1313 mosaic of two frames to show the surface detail, sorry for the ulgy stitching:

And then close up with 2x barlows, first up is 1313 + 1314 mosaic of two frames:

And then another 2x single shot, 1316:

Enjoy a short session.

I used a tripod instead of the short pier I setup for deep sky inaging, far more comfort and still good enough for solar imaging.  I have some concept of the pole in my backyard.

20240603 Sun in H-alpha

 Going back to H-alpha, just before a family BBQ.

Windy day, suboptimal seeeing I would say 4/10, transparency nice at 8/10.

20240516 Sun (White Light)

Trying the 8" SCT white light again, this time with a green filter, I hope it could help a bit on combating seeing?

1541 (UT), using 50% of frames:

Same source, but using 10% of frames only:

1527 (UT) using 10% of the frames:

I didn't try AB comparison with or without the green filter.  Still no granulations.

20240510 Sun (White light)

 Still following the huge active region but this time in white light, the cloud is still following me.

And then I scanned around to find this "smaller" sunspot:

Taken with my Meade 8" SCT at prime focus, ASI 462mm, Baader.

20240509 Sun (H-alpha)

 AR3664 and AR3668 are probably one of the biggest active regions that I have ever taken, glad to have a few minutes of gaps among the cloud.

Ranger with 1.6x barlows, 1433-1441 (UIT)

An animation will tell the subtle changes:

Several big prominences group as well:

I would like to take some white light shots with my 8" SCT but then the cloud forbid me to do so.

Large aperture white light sun

Time to experiment with my 8" mighty SCT!

First of all, the semi-permanent pier is fantastic.  Much faster setup, no need to do any alignment, rock solid for imaging, I'm loving it!

Mounted and balanced on DEC, goto the Sun with 2000mm of focal length from zero position.  It was very close, I could centre the sun without problem.  Sync'ed the mount and then it tracked for more than half an hour, still dead centre.

No problem with manual focusing, rock solid.  The heavy wooden board below was not an issue at all, maybe it helps on stabilising any vibration too.

Seeing less than desirable with cloud running really fast, so just a test shot.

The sun is really busy these days, with loads of sunspots here and there.  This group was close to the centre.  During moments of good seeing, the visual view is simply stunning with loads of detail inside that bigger sunspot.

I'm going to use this rig for planet imaging at night, when condition allows.

20240415 Sun

Very windy, again on the new pier.  Faster setup time, and the pier is very stable! 

Taken with the 1.6x Baader barlows, poorly mosaic of four frames from 1632 to 1637 (UT+1), cloud  moving quickly making mosaic very difficult, more like testing the setup.