The weather was great, so of course, I used the opportunity to create a timelapse of the beautiful area of sunspots. And there was some flares, and a lot of movement during the 4 hours I recorded. I have some problems with "newton rings" that I am trying to figure out how to resolve. And they are coming and going in this video.
Tech det: 5 inch homemade h-alpha, ASI178MM camera, gain 150, 1.8ms exposures. Stacked in AS!3, sharpened and aligned in imPPG and animated in PIPP.
There were a lot of fleeting clouds, but I just wanted to try out some timelapse. Big was my surprise when I suddenly saw a bright flare totally overexposing part of the chip. Unfortunately, the clouds made most of the flash out of reach. But I managed to get about half of the images bright enough to be used. And the rest had variable brightness, making it difficult. And the dark images made the timelapse jump at times. But it is nice after all.
Tech det : 5" homemade h-alpha telescope, ASI178MM camera, gain 150, 2.5ms exposure, stacked with AS!3, sharpened and aligned with imPPG, animated with PIPP.
The skies were semi-clear on saturday the 26 of March, so I set up my 5 inch homemade h-alpha scoep to catch a timelapse of a new, fairly large sunspot. And it was indeed active. The following timelapse was recorded over two hours around noon. I tried to color the images, but was never happy with the result, so I left it black and white.
Tech det : 5" h-alpha telescope, ASI178MM gain 150, exp 3ms. Stacked in AS!3, sharpened and aligned in imPPG and animated in PIPP.
The Sun is definitely alive. Despite some passing clouds, I managed to capture a flare erupting. The following is a video made from images captured of\ver a period of about 1.5 hours. I had to delete some of the images due to the clouds partly obscuring the view. This made the video cleaner.
Tech details : Homemade 5" h-alpha telescope, ASI178MM gain 200, 500x2ms exposures. Captured using Firecapture, stacked using AS!3. Sharpened and aligned with imPPG. Colorized using Irfanview. Animation created with PIPP.
I had an idea a few years ago on how to build a large H-alpha telescope. Due to the pandemic and other reasons, I didn't finish it until lately. I have had to make some modifications and adjustments, but now it seems to be working. So I have now moved up from a Lunt 35 to a 127mm homemade beast. And MAN, apert
re is king! I struggled to focus properly due to the long focal length, and a lot of turbulence. But I finally got there, and the following is the result. I would say I am happy with this...
Tech details : 127mm homemade h-alpha telescope. ASI178MM camera, 1560x1560 crop. 1000x3ms exposures. Recorded with SharpCap, stacked using AS!3, sharpened in imPPG and color and unsharp masking in Gimp.
The images show without and with the sharpening. I am not sure which one I like the most. Without Unsharp Mask is softer, but with, it becomes more "dramatic". Click on the image to view full size!
We have had a lot of clear evenings and nights lately, and I have used the opportunity to take images of a growing Moon. I managed to create images on the 6th, the 8th, the 9th and the 10th of February before the clouds gathered yet again. I have tried different techniques to get as much as possible from the images. I am still learning to process images taken with my new Klevtsov. And I think this is the most I have gotten from them. I decided to reduce them from the original size. The original sampling was about 0.25" per pixel. I doubled that to 0.5". It seems to make the images clearer and sharper. So I will maybe continue doing that. All images are mosaics of several images, since the field of the ASI178 only covers about 500x750". Click on the images to get original size. Right-click and choose "Open image in new tab" to zoom in on the details.
Tech details : TAL Kletvtsov-Cass 200/2000mm, ASI178MM camera with Astronomik ProPlanet 642 filter. Gain 200, 1000x4mS exposures. Stacked 25% best in AS!3, sharpened using wavelets in RegiStax 6, processed in Gimp 2.10.
February 6th :
February 8th:
February 9th:
February 10th:
A few months ago, I aquired an old Klevtsov-Cassegrain. I have been itching to try it on some high-resolution work. But weather and other reasons have made it impossible. Until yesterday. The moon was high, and a few days away from full. So there are some regions on the western parts that makes a great relief. And I wanted to capture that. I didn't care to take photos of the rest of the moon, as it is boringly flat. The telescope proved to be pleasantly sharp. I could even make out a number of cratlets in Plato. Although they aren't showing up at circles, they are obvious from the lightness compared to their surroundings. I will try later to picture those when the shades are different. And the atmosphere is calmer.
Tech data : Tal Klevtsov-Cassegrain 200mm F/10, ASI178MM 6ms exp, Gain 150, SharpCap for recording, AS!3 for stacking (20% best images), RegiStax 6 for wavelet sharpening, Image Composite Editor for stitching.
For full image, click on the image, then open it in another tab. Then you can zoom to 100%. The original image is 7500x3500 pixels.
