The Sun 19th May 2024
The sun has been very active this year causing auroras galore to be seen much further from the earth’s poles than usual. The cause is huge active regions such as can be seen in this image where multiple sunspots are evident.
We are now in a period known as Solar Maximum; a time during the 11 year solar cycle when the sun puts on its best variety act. We won't know when it will end until features like sunspots and the gas emissions seen on the edge of the sun decrease in number until finally at the end of the current cycle it will go very quiet.
To give you a sense of scale, the largest sunspot you can see on the surface at centre-right of the image is at least the size of the earth and perhaps a bit larger.
A little bit about equipment and processing:
I capture the base data using a SolarQuest mount, Skywatcher 72ED Evo Pro telescope, Quark Chromosphere filter (DayStar refer to this as an eyepiece for some reason) and an ASI174MM camera. Acquisition assisted by using SharpCap via USB link from camera to PC resulting in a 2000 frame SER format video in mono (16 bit).
Processing is relatively straight forward. Video processed/stacked in AuroStakkert 3 before finishing in Photoshop where I mostly work in the Camera Raw Filter. You are welcome to contact me if you are interested in exploring this further and/or producing solar images like this.
The Sun 19th May 2024
The sun has been very active this year causing auroras galore to be seen much further from the earth’s poles than usual. The cause is huge active regions such as can be seen in this image where multiple sunspots are evident.
We are now in a period known as Solar Maximum; a time during the 11 year solar cycle when the sun puts on its best variety act. We won't know when it will end until features like sunspots and the gas emissions seen on the edge of the sun decrease in number until finally at the end of the current cycle it will go very quiet.
To give you a sense of scale, the largest sunspot you can see on the surface at centre-right of the image is at least the size of the earth and perhaps a bit larger.
A little bit about equipment and processing:
I capture the base data using a SolarQuest mount, Skywatcher 72ED Evo Pro telescope, Quark Chromosphere filter (DayStar refer to this as an eyepiece for some reason) and an ASI174MM camera. Acquisition assisted by using SharpCap via USB link from camera to PC resulting in a 2000 frame SER format video in mono (16 bit).
Processing is relatively straight forward. Video processed/stacked in AuroStakkert 3 before finishing in Photoshop where I mostly work in the Camera Raw Filter. You are welcome to contact me if you are interested in exploring this further and/or producing solar images like this.