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.

Aurora Borealis

This is not exactly astronomical, but then it's still a result of extra-terrestial stream of high energy particles.  This is probably the first time I captured some but it's not visible in the light polluted front yard.

It's only taken handheld from my home with a mobile phone. 

It was just before I sleep, otherwise, it should worth a short travel to darker site.

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.

20240411 New fixed pier, new Ranger tube rings and the Baader Q Barlows

Prominence only, merged by two frames, not stitched perfectly so it was made dimmer to hide the artifacts, 0948 and 0949 (UT+1)

Next up is the close up of the active regions

0954 (UT+1)

0955 (UT+1)

All taken with ASI 462mm with the Baader 1.6x Q barlows and here is my new setup:

The pier is fixed on the floor, the mount is removable and stored inside the house.