TheSkySearchers

Hi all,

Been a fun day and a very cold day. I took some shots of the Sun earlier and couldn't seem to find focus. Solar can be like that; you wonder if it's the sky or your focus?

I wanted to make sure it was the skies and not my focus. The best way to do that is get focus on ol' Luna, and then you're set up for ol' Sol.

I went out out my WL scope, a C80-HD. The temps were -17C (1.5F), so I took the scope and my EOS550D camera outside to cool down for half an hour. The camera battety died during the cool down period, but I have two batteries for this, so in went the charged one.

I blew off 160 frames, listening to the camera shutter taking its time in the cold... It turned out my focus was a bit off as well, hopefully focusing on some craters fixed that. I shall see.

I used a Baader 7.5nm Solar Continuum and UV/IR cut filter in my camera T-ring for this; all were shot at ISO 800 and 1/160th sec exposure. Stacked in PIPP and aglined with AS3 and no post processing. The best 10% of all that here:


Have a good night everyone

Very beautiful image Mark!

Looks like your focus was good Mark.

Excellent detail on the rays.

Graeme

well done , sharp shot , thx .

Very nice, my new background

Thanks @Ylem , @Graeme1858 , @messier 111 and @Lady Fraktor ! Gabrielle, you flatter me

I stacked it again in AS3 and instead of combinig RAW at 65%, I set it to 15% like I do for the Sun. Bit sharper and more contrast:



Thanks again!

Definitely sharper!

That Baader Solar Continuum filter does a great job!

Graeme

very nice, have you tried stacking an ha filter with your bader Solar Continuum when you capture solar images?, i read a post years ago about it and i gave a few attempts, it does kinda look like it enhances the detail a little .

yobbo89 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 25, 2024 8:04 pm very nice, have you tried stacking an ha filter with your bader Solar Continuum when you capture solar images?, i read a post years ago about it and i gave a few attempts, it does kinda look like it enhances the detail a little .

Thanks, and no I haven't; never even thought about it! Do you mean something like this? Baader H-alpha Ultra-Narrowband-Filters (6.5nm)

Nice capture Mark!

Thefatkitty wrote: ↑Sun Feb 25, 2024 9:36 pm

yobbo89 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 25, 2024 8:04 pm very nice, have you tried stacking an ha filter with your bader Solar Continuum when you capture solar images?, i read a post years ago about it and i gave a few attempts, it does kinda look like it enhances the detail a little .

Thanks, and no I haven't; never even thought about it! Do you mean something like this? Baader H-alpha Ultra-Narrowband-Filters (6.5nm)

Hmm, I found this
https://www.baader-planetarium.com/en/b ... ed%29.html


I could not find any info of stacking a ha filter to improve contrast but there's plenty of post over at cn with user trying other filters with better results, they used wratten green, red., maybe worth to experiment if you have a bunch of filters