Huge Solar Prominences on 21 Jul13 & solar images days after

yltansg · Post by **yltansg** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 5:38 pm

Hi,

The Sun has been fairly quiet these days, despite talks of double peak solar maxima.

Caught this huge proms on the Eastern Limb today. Wonder what is on the other side that has caused it?

Full Disk:

Zoom-in view of proms:

Enjoy

Gary · Post by **Gary** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 5:44 pm

Massive!! Thanks for sharing.

shirox · Post by **shirox** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 7:20 pm

aleetk · Post by **aleetk** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 7:32 pm

Hi yltansg. Those solar images of yours are really nice! How do you get your sun to look like that with all the details. If I'm doing visual with my Coronado PST, I have no problem seeing all the details but when I do imaging, the most I get are sunspots and even if I try processing the image in photoshop, I still can't get it to look like yours by miles away. Care to share your exposure settings and how you process your photos? Here's the link to my image of the sun I took today. http://www.flickr.com/photos/98832106@N03/9331941023/

yltansg · Post by **yltansg** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 8:40 pm

Hi Aleetk,

Are you using a colour camera? I use a Imaging Source mono camera (Black & White, DMK 41AU02.AS). Mono camera give sharper details. I started with a colour camera but dropped it after trying BW camera

The workflow for the DMK camera:

a. The first step is to achieve a sharp focus. I use the limbs for focusing. The recordings are captured as avi video files. The setting on the camera is dependent on how bright the background is. Typically I use 1/120 exposure, Gamma set to 80, gain to as low as possible.

b. Next I use Registax freeware to align and stack. I usually pick the best 300 frames. This would give me good signal to noise ratio and give relatively good picture after wavelet processing. For solar picture, I leave the sharpening and denoise at default and set the lever to maximium at level 1. In this process I produce a TIFF picture that is stacked from 300 best frames.

c. I use Photoshop to add in the colours using "Colour Balance" function.

There are many tutorials on youtube. You can try looking at: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL ... i8FauDihFz

Wish you all the best.

Alfred

aleetk wrote:Hi yltansg. Those solar images of yours are really nice! How do you get your sun to look like that with all the details. If I'm doing visual with my Coronado PST, I have no problem seeing all the details but when I do imaging, the most I get are sunspots and even if I try processing the image in photoshop, I still can't get it to look like yours by miles away. Care to share your exposure settings and how you process your photos? Here's the link to my image of the sun I took today. http://www.flickr.com/photos/98832106@N03/9331941023/

yltansg · Post by **yltansg** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 8:46 pm

Hi Aleetk,

In addition to my earlier workflow, sometimes I set the gain to a high value so that the solar disk becomes totally white-out. Doing so will let the proms come out sharper.

I did that this afternoon for the huge proms. You can see that the proms have changed from the one that I posted earlier.

aleetk · Post by **aleetk** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 9:44 pm

Hi yltansg. Actually I tried prime focus connecting my nikon dslr to the solar scope but I find it hard to achieve focus and also I can't get the whole image of the sun in the lcd screen. This morning however, I tried afocal method using my sony nex-7 and I can get the whole image in my lcd screen but still hard problems with focusing. It was more of trial and error before finally managed to get the image sharp. Tried using my neximage webcam prime focus too but can't get whole image onto the screen. In fact with the neximage, the sun appeared a whole lot bigger

Anyway, thanks for sharing your settings and workflow

I will try again next time.

cataclysm · Post by **cataclysm** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 12:40 am

Wow! That's huge!

lqx · Post by **lqx** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 12:27 pm

superiorstream · Post by **superiorstream** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 1:17 pm

Hi,Alfred
Yes,saw that too yesterday but when the prominences is had just 'exploded'.I estimated its about 400,000- km
long.Mind if I post the photo on your thread?
As for photoing the sun with compact,I think it works ONLY if you are using the old generation of camera.
Today compact cuts most of the RED and violet region off so you cant use these.
For me,I only use compact(afocal) and it makes things simple and light;but to single out which is not easy and it took me almost 2 years to find one--yes and after buying so many for testing--(I am stuck with 2 boxes!! of camera).You also need a camera with a CONCAVE curve in the front lens to minimize newtons ring formation in your Ha images.-
and if you ask the sales for a camera with a concave front surface they will look at you as if you are a fool!Yes
I found one and been using it since.Thanks.

SingAstro

Huge Solar Prominences on 21 Jul13 & solar images days after

Huge Solar Prominences on 21 Jul13 & solar images days after

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