Flames ahoy!

 The last few days, I have tried a lot of techniques and processes for making timelapses of solar porminences. It has been a learning curve, but interesting. And I now feel I have it more or less under control. These are the two videos I made today. I found a large double prominence and filmed it for 3 hours. I am filming from my balcony, and when the sun is blocked by a support, I look at the whole sun, and I realized that there was a large area on the other side that had a lot of action. Unfortunately, clouds moved in, so I had to stop after about 1.5 hours. But it was definitely interesting.

I have used the same gear as before, but the processing is now AS!3 for stacking, then aligning ad cropping using imPPG before using PIPP for animation. This is smooth and works without a hitch.

Active prominence

 Another prominence. 4 hours of timelapse.

Tech det : Lunt LS35, ASI178MM gain 150, exp : 2.5ms. Stacked in AS!3, animated in PIPP.

Solar prominence animation, second attempt

 The first attempt was exciting, and inspiring. So I decided to make another go yesterday. But tracking was not good. I am not able to properly polar align my mount now during the summer, so the Sun drifted out of view of the camera in 10 minutes. More precisely, the cropped view. I only used 512x512 pixels of the cameras 3000x2000. Both in order to lower the storage demands, but also to speed up frames per second. 

The following is an interesting loop of plasma I discovered and started filming at the end of my session before I had to leave. Much to my joy and excitement, this loop was really moving. The frames were recorded 2 minutes apart. Which gives an impression of just how fast the plasma moves in this loop.

Tech details : Lunt LS35 Deluxe H-alpha telescope. ASI178MM gain 150, exp 2 ms. Stacked in AS!3, processed and animated in Gimp.

First attempt at protuberance animation

Today, on June 12th, there was a lot of activity on the Sun, and I found one "forest" that I decided to take multiple videos of. After processing each of the videos in AS!3, I had a list of 39 images. Then I loaded these images into GIMP as layers. After aligned them all, I created a GIF-animation from them. And the following is the result. The 39 images were captured in 1 h 40 min.

Tech details : Lunt LS35 Deluxe hydrogen alpha telescope, ASI178MM camera, no binning, 2.5 ms exposure, gain 150, stacked in AS!3, processed and animated in GIMP. 

Interesting features on the surface on the Moon

 I have so far concentrated on the beautiful craters on the Moon. Both large and barely visible in my telescopes. But while looking at the the surface, I noticed some other features. Like faults on the surface. And I decided to try to enhance them. Particularly one area intrigued me. After conferring with the detailed images in Luna Cognita, I identified the parts.

In the image below, the horizontal "canyon" on the right, is called Rimae Ariadaeus. The v-shaped line is several smaller craters embedded into it. But they are hardly seen on this image. Needs more aperture to see them properly. The line is called Rima Hyginus, after the crater at the center, Hyginus.

In the lower part of the image, one can see thin lines. These are called Rimae Triesnecker. Named after the large crater to the left is also called Triesnecker. The crater at the top is called Manilius.

Click on the image for larger size.

Technical data : 6" RC with 2.5x Powermate. ASI178MM camera. Stacking with AS!3, wavelets with Registax 6.

Copernicus

 Long time since I have updated my pages here. But the last few days, I have done some imaging of the Moon. It is really interesting object that is probably a bit forgotten by us astrophotographers. But I love it. It is dynamic, and there are so many details that are a challenge to image. Some because they are small. Some because they are only visible when the sunlight is at a certain angle. 

I have tried new methods for increasing resolution. Not just using a larger telescope, but also how I process the image. In the following image, I tried a wide view of the Copernicus crater. I have been observing this crater in detail using high magninfication, and the whole area is full of interesting smaller details. Like mountains and craters. As can be seen in this image. Although I only used a 6 inch RC, a lot of details are still visible.

In processing, I used the drizzle functionality in AS!3 this time, and it made it much easier to extract details later using the wavelet function in Registax. I spent some time trying out different settings for this image. And it is hard. Because the setting that produced the most detail in one area, would make another part look weird. So I settled on this version as a "compromise". I know I can extract more details, but not without making the image look weird. And if I make it more pleasing, much details are lost. So enjoy the compromise! Click on the image to see a full version.

Tch details : TPO 6" RC F/9. ASI178MM camera. Gain 250, 1ms exposures. 1040x1040 crop. Dyadic mode wavelets in Registax. Some levels enhancement in Gimp.