Laboratorium Solaris: observing the limb

I had made the full disk image but... There is a part of image that I like and the (most) part that is just bad. I blame myself for mistuned filter. Contrast of the surface was very low and stacking ended up "blotchy". Seeing was nice - only slight "waving" was barely seen along the solar limb.

 

WARNING! Sun is dangerous, use proper filters for observing and imaging!

 

Aquisition time: JD 2456717.886007 (01.03.2014 13:15:51 MSK).

Image orientation: inverted (west is left and North is down)

Equipment:

Canon EOS 60D (unmodded) coupled to Coronado PST via Baader Planetarium Hyperion Zoom 8-24 mm Mark III click-stop system eyepiece and Baader Planetarium M43-to-T2 conversion ring and mounted on photo-tripod.

Aperture 40 mm

Native focal length 400 mm

Projection zoom setting: 20 mm.

Effective focal length ~900 mm

Tv = 1/30 seconds

Av (effective) = NA

ISO 800

Exposures: 88 (maximum achieved :)

Processing: images were converted to monochrome and exported as 8-bit .TIFFs. Images were assembled into stack in ImageJ and saved as .AVI. AVI was processed in Autostakkert!2.

Resulting image was subjected to Richardson-Lucy deconvolution in AstraImage 3.0 (Cauchy type PSF, size 2,8 units, 10 iterations - harsh, but 88 stacked frames hold it nicely).

Contrast enchancement, high-pass filtering and coloration made in Photoshop.

Note: 200-300 frames would be just enoug to effectively supress most of ISO800 noise, but I have already noticed motion of fine solar features between first and the last frame of the sequence. Either faster camera is needed or tracking mount and and "lower ISO+longer exposure" combo.

Done