04/01/24 Sun in CaK

[Thefatkitty]

Happy April 1st, Easter monday, etc....

The eclipse is a week away. My forecast for next Monday says Sun mixed with clouds. Should be fun to watch that change; hopefully for the better.

I'm expecting to do all that with my Ca-K setup; it's listed in my sig file. Reason? A nice wide field view, and it really seems to do well even with hazey skies. My HA scope still needs it's mount fixed, and my WL setup doesn't do well with haze. This is the beginning of April here, the forecast already is rain/snow/cold until next Sunday, so haze might well be a part of my Monday.

Today started off clear, but I was busy. At about 3PM I got in, and even though my skies were this, I thought lets give it a go. I wanted to see if I could even get anything though I thought my chances were not at all good. Not to mention ol' Sol looks like it's in a solar minimum at the moment.

I took 2000 frames with Sharpcap. Usually on a clear day, my exposeure is between 11 and 14MS. Today I had it up to 42. No gain ever; I find it blows out the center of the disc.

I took the SER file and opened it with AS3. The best I could get after a few tries was a stack of 5 frames. The quality graph was flatter than a pancake

Not good; especially around the edge of the disc on the left.

So I thought to try something I never have. When I take shots of the Moon with my DSLR, I use PIPP to align the RAW images and convert them to TIFF files. I sort them by quality, take the best 90% and above, then stack all that with AS3.

I know PIPP will open a SER file, so I did that, and processed the Sun with the same settings I use for the Moon. Out of 2000 frames with the SER file, I got back 232 TIFF images. All were over 80% quality, and 57 were over 90%.
I took the 57 images, opened them with AS3 and stacked the best 5 again.

What a difference!! OK, not much to see, but it was "visually acceptable", at least to me... The edge of the disc is OK, and there is detail with the faculae, plus the one spot. It does seem to be a bit "linear" as in following the chip on the camera, but I'll take it.

I'm hoping for good weather on the 8th, but even if it's what I had today, at least I know it's doable. Might not be the best, but I'll take what I can.

And @AstroBee Greg, thanks for this: viewtopic.php?p=269209#p269209 . What a difference and it really makes sense, especially for me today! Even yesteday I only stacked 20 frames from 2000 and the results were much better than my usual 2-300. Less processing too which is always good. A much appreciated KISS factor there, thank you

Well, my 3 day weekend is over. In for a lot of rain tomorrow and Wednesday. Welcome back to work

All the best everyone!

[AstroBee]

Nice shot Mark considering the conditions. It's been quite a while since we've seen a solar disc this quite. Of course, just in time for the eclipse...

[Ylem]

Very nice Mark!

[StarHugger]

Awesome Mark,

Readiness is key indeed...

I have decided to image the partial Eclipse as the main goal in all the wavelengths I can muster, regional weather forecasts here indicate inclement weather in the central US for the Eclipse.

I have the Great Lakes to the east of me so I only have 3 directions of extended travel to acure clear skies, that and the extended forecast have me rethinking the whole senario.

The time in partial should allow me to throw every filter and filter stack I have at it.

Fingers crossed