20090320 Sun

Great seeing, I would rate it 6/10, it's rare for day time! Transparency usually suffered under this kind of seeing, it's like 2-3/10. Telescope is my Celestron C5, with PST etalon and my Cheapy-ERF with BF10. Camera is my DMK 31AF03, tracked on my Meade LXD55, everything indoor from an open window as usual.

Solar activity remains low, but larger aperture really helps to bring out something. Our star is always dynamic, it's just a matter of aperture and focal length if it's not the case. During solar minimum, aperture fever gets worser... I still remember several years ago, I announced that 40mm is more than enough for most situation - you know what, longer focal length is useless, unless you're willing to do mosaic every time you took any active regions at those time!

Back to the reality, bigger aperture is the only way out these days.

1622 (GMT+8):-


1626 (GMT+8), somewhere in the middle of the disc:-


1629 (GMT+8), a corner:-


1630 (GMT+8), another corner:-
Processing this kind of images (under good seeing) are very easy, just stack them, slide the wavelet level one to around 60, made false color, done!