sun spots

[devilgas]

playing around with the 'scope this afternoon and have finally managed to get some photos of the 2 large sunspot groups that are working their way across the sun.
shot through a 900mm scope with a 25mm eyepiece, giving a magnification of around 35x. custom made baader filter stops stuff getting burned by the suns rays

[Ian]

Re: sun spots

playing around with the 'scope this afternoon and have finally managed to get some photos of the 2 large sunspot groups that are working their way across the sun.
shot through a 900mm scope with a 25mm eyepiece, giving a magnification of around 35x. custom made baader filter stops stuff getting burned by the suns rays

Brilliant piece of work, Dave, and today's POTD

http://dpnow.com/7891.html

Ian

[devilgas]

Re: sun spots

thanks ian!!

focussing was a bit of a challenge. with a bit of luck it'll be sunny again tomorrow and i can hook the laptop to the camera (battery was dead on it today and the remote control software wasn't on the netbook) which should make getting the focus right a bit easier. be interesting to see how the groups develop, and to see if i can actually hit the correct focus while using a bit of kit called a barlow lens (increases the magnification, in my case, by 2).

the image above is cropped by a small amount (<5%) to get the same amount of -ve space on either side, and obviously resized for the forum. i was quite pleased with the results, but want to achieve something better.

[ash]

Re: sun spots

Interesting shot, although I do prefer shots that show that it is actually the sun and not an egg
Ash.

[devilgas]

Re: sun spots

Interesting shot, although I do prefer shots that show that it is actually the sun and not an egg
Ash.

couldn't find a lion brand label on it, so assumed it was the sun rather than an egg. would it help if i coloured it yellow? just as well i didn't post the shots taken through the oxy filters. don't think you'd like the green colouring.

[Ian]

Re: sun spots

I wonder if Ash is referring to colour or tone? It is a bit magenta and one tends to think of the sun as being a golden yellow

I'm just so impressed that Dave has managed to get an image of this quality at all!

Ian

[devilgas]

Re: sun spots

the colour in the original shot isn't that far removed from the true colour of the sun. googling showed that the temp of the sun is 5780k ('peach pinkish'), however here's a false colour shot....



i'll admit, it looks more 'normal' in yellow due to our conditioning of how the sun should look, however it does start to lose definition & detail which was why i went with the original non conventionalised shot.

sod's law, it's cloudy today.

[Barr1e]

Re: sun spots

Congratulations on being chosen for POTD..

Impressive shooting.

If you look closely at the video you can see the lion.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGr5y2tNoqM"]"Go to work on an egg" Tony Hancock and Patricia Hayes in 1950s TV ad - YouTube[/ame]

Regards. Barr1e

[devilgas]

Re: sun spots

2 more from today. the sun came out about 30mins before i had to leave for rugby, so these were *very* rushed. some thin clouds still hanging about, hence the 'smoke'. first shot is with the 26mm eyepiece (as before), 2nd is with the 2x barlow lens, making the magnification 69x.

didn't get chance to hook up the laptop, so these were focussed using live view on the back of the camera. not as sharp as the previous because i'd left the iso ramped up....it was either a handful of rushed shots or nothing at all. forgot the cable release so had to do these using the 10sec timer.





again, they are scaled down versions of the full image. you can also see how the 2 groups are moving across the suns disc (ignore the angle change from yesterday, that's simply down to how i attached the camera to the scope), with the group on the left moving more into view, and the group on the right, moving towards the outer limb.

[devilgas]

Re: sun spots

not sure what happened to the first 2 shots. i guess moving them to a different gallery broke the links?

[devilgas]

Re: sun spots

and things are just getting better and better. this afternoon (6th march 2011), we now have 3 massive sun spot groups, with a 4th just coming into presence on the far left of the shot. there's also a few small spots in the centre.



here, we have the x-factor......



as with the previous shots, these are uncropped, scaled down versions of the full size images. again, ignore the angle of the shots. it is different from the previous ones as i'm trying to get the groups into areas of clear focus (the edges get fuzzy due to the filter material)

[devilgas]

Re: sun spots

gave up using the laptop. difficult to see the screen outside. focus is now exclusively done using live view on the camera. it's a challenge to get it correct as literally turning the focus knob on the telescope just a few degrees makes the difference between it being in focus and starting to get blurry. think i'm getting there though!

[ekkl]

Re: sun spots

Good effort Dave, nice pictures, astro-photography can be very rewarding.

[devilgas]

Re: sun spots

a crop (about half full size) of the x-factor sunspot.....

[devilgas]

Re: sun spots

Good effort Dave, nice pictures, astro-photography can be very rewarding.

thanks ekkl. gotta be honest, it's been more pain than pleasure until this week. i'd only recently got the correct adapters to do afocal work with the dslr, and even then, i can only use 1 of my eyepieces with it. i initially wanted to do prime focus, however the focus assembly on the 'scope wouldn't move in far enough. wasn't keen on moving the rear mirror (reducing the F number from 900mm to about 850mm in the process) to address that problem. can happily do prime shooting with a webcam, but the quality (without stacking) is much worse than the dslr.
as it turns out, afocal with the 26mm ep (eyepiece) works ok. adding the barlow (effectively giving a 13mm ep) also fell within the focus mech range. the 6mm ep is a waste of space on my scope (it's only a 114mm dia tube). afocal with the 40mm ep again fell outside the focus mech range.

haven't tried it all in darkness yet. i think that is going to be very hit and miss. might give it a go tonight if the skies stay clear.

only problem i can see is that it'll be a large bore guided scope on the shopping list next. and i thought underwater photography was expensive!