This is a mosaic of 5 images.. it was supposed to be a big panorama image but while imaging the disk, i missed a portion somewhere in between so had to cut it down to this image only.
Prominence - 20 August 2013
Yesterday seeing was a bit low than what i usually see here.. Here is a combined image of a prominence and the solar surface. Same equipment and processing routine: Lunt 60 telescope, Televue 2.5X barlow and DMK21 camera.
Solar Mosaic with Barlow - 17 August 2013
So i tried to cover as much Sun as i could in the time i had yesterday. Got eleven videos with DSSR and created this mosaic of the Sun. I have used 2.5X televue barlow here with my 60mm lunt solar scope.
Click an image to see it in full resolution.
Solar Images - 15 August 2013
These days sun is keeping itself very busy.. so many interesting features are up there.. this is my today's collection:
More images from 11 August
These are the two i could not process on 11 August. All of these are in inverted 'colors'.
Mosaic of a huge filament - 11 August 2013
Yesterday i captured the whole solar disk with a huge filament at prime focus.. today i used 2.5X barlow lens and made 9 videos of this huge filament, processed them and made a mosaic.. It took me about 5 hours to capture the videos and process them into these images. The comfort of point and shoot is not available for astro-images!
Solar Disk - 10 Aug 2013
Here is a mosaic of the sun, with lunt telescope and DMK21 camera. I removed televue barlow to record 4 videos at prime focus, processed them and made a mosaic in Photoshop.
Colored Prominence Animation 22 July 2013
This is my first attempt of colored animation. I created an action in photoshop and then did the batch processing (with the help of DVS) and voila, a colored animation popped out!
Prominence Animation 22 Jul 2103
Hi everyone, I am late on this but actually could not find time to process the data earlier. Time for video recording was 2 hours and at 15 frames per second, it became an animation of 12 seconds.
I recorded 194 videos and 184 were selected for this animation. Registax 6 took hours and hours for processing all this. I am happy that there is a batch mode available in the software. There is a small pause of about 5 minutes of recording, hence a slight jerk in the video around second 7. As always, you can right click on the video and can select 'Turn Loop On' option to thoroughly enjoy this prominence.
Small sunspots today - 19 July 2013
I spotted very small sunspots in lunt telescope today.. here is an image of them.
Prominence Animation - 19 July 2013
I was hoping for a longer recording today but for some unknown reason to me DSSR, my acquisition program, was not guiding correctly. After various settings, i gave up on tracking and manually controlled the mount.
I recorded for about 25 minutes and then clouds came in. So what you are seeing here in just 6 seconds, actually happened in 25 minutes on the solar surface.
Last image today - 18 July 2013
This is the last image i took today. So much is happening on the Sun these days.. good for us!
More images - 18 July 2013
Here is another vibrant area today on the Sun.
Sunspot and Halpha details
Here is an area of a sunspot region and its surrounding.. in four different flavors.
Prominence Animation - 18 July 2013
okay so i finally learnt to use DVS and here is the animation.. very neat software!
This movie is 12 seconds long and covers an actual time of about 1 hour and 15 minutes. The frame rate is 15 fps.
Prominence Today - 16 July 2013
okay.. today was a good day for solar imaging and bad day on my software learning. I first captured a single video of this prominence and then went on recording several videos with a wonderful software, DSSR, Dave Solar System Recorder. These past days i was using my VX mount's hand controller to keep the sun in the view while recording. DSSR is pure magic to me.. it was tracking the sun and was doing it so well! I came inside to avoid the heat.
After i finished recording, i noticed that every video was less than 200 frames, instead of 1000 frames! I cannot use these videos.. these are all full of noise and very low data. There goes another attempt on animating a prominence. I should spent more time in learning everything in this software.
Anyway folks.. enjoy this image.
Clouds again :(
It's cloudy here today as well.. I was hoping to try 'FireCapture' software's many other untapped features today but this is postponed now.
Cloudy sky today
I waited all day but the sky remained cloudy today.. sorry, no solar image today folks. Astro-imagers love to hate the bad sky!
The good thing is, I can do more earthly stuff on the days such as this one.. spend more time with my family.. so kind of blessing in disguise.
Solar Prominence Today - 13 July
Seeing is pretty soft today.. i could only capture this image.
Prominence Animation, first attempt
Hi everyone, i used to do solar animations some time ago but that was with the legendary Losmandy Titan Mount.. which was fixed at my previous observatory and had a very good polar alignment. I remember that i did not feel any need of any nudge to the mount for more than 30 minutes.
Now the more i am using Celestron Advanced VX mount, the more i am finding that it really should be called a mount for pros. Every time i take out the mount in the front courtyard and use only a compass to 'align' it to the north pole. There you go.. the mount is aligned and it works quite fine, even with a 2.5X barlow lens. I am happy with this mount!
I was testing this mount for making animations (9 july 2013).. following video is short.. okay.. very short, just 3 seconds. So folks if you want to enjoy it, right click on the video and choose 'Turn loop ON', it will keep repeating this movie clip and you would appreciated that something IS moving on the Sun!
By the way, i took me about 45 minutes to capture the video files, a few hours ot process them.. so these 3 seconds are one of your most important seconds in your life :-)
Click on the image to play the video
