April 2011 Sunspots

As we have been having some nice summery weather in April, it gives us a great chance to get out in the garden and do some solar imaging.

I have recently had a major equipment change, and sold my LX200 (sad to see you go) and I now have an NEQ6 Pro mount instead, with my trusty Skywatcher ED80 Pro onboard.

Luckily there seems to be a good selection of sunspots now appearing. I tried imaging with a newly purchased QHY5 camera which I intend to use as a guide camera, but I thought I would give it a go on the Sun. It’s ok but not a patch on the DMK21 camera. I was struggling to get 10fps out of the QHY5.

This image was taken with the Mono DMK21 with a UV/IR filter and Baader Solar Continuum filter through the ED80 Pro and I used some cheap Baader Solar Filter paper which was taped to the inside of my scope plastic cover. Even though this solar paper has a scratch in it and a big fingerprint on it, it still manages to produce some great images, at about only 1 inch across. The exposure time is very low in order to get the detail. I then open it up in Photoshop and add some false colour.

My only problem at the moment is that the DMK21 has a lot of ‘dust bunnies’ in it, and I really need to take flats next time to get rid of them. As at the moment I have to get rid of them in Photoshop.

Solar Activity 13th March 2010

Writing this blog post from actually inside the observatory today, now I have sorted out my internet access, by using a powerline adaptor which passes the network data through your home electrical wires and is a lot more stable than wireless. especially if you are any distance away from the house.

Did not expect to do any imaging today, just opened the roof to check on the Sun and see if there was any activity, and there was, even better than when I looked a couple of weeks ago.

Here are my images, the enlarged images of the sunspots were taken on my 10″ LX200 with a glass solar filter, using an SPC900 webcam and then stacking in registax, one in colour and one in black and white.

The large shot of the Sun below was taken via my Canon 450D SLR using a Televue 2x Barlow on my 80mm refractor with a Mylar paper solar filter.