This was my first attempt at creating a mosaic of the sun. The image below is composed from approximately 20 images across the surface of the sun.  Processing this type of Hydrogen Alpha image is very, very painful. It is extremely hard to get consistent colour, clarity and luminance across the whole image. Mosaics tend to add artifacts at the overlap points which show up dramatically especially in the background. My initial attemps looked like a patch work quilt, but after many attempts I have something usable. Assembling and processing the images to get this final image took me about 6 hours. I don't think I will do this too often :-)

The image was assembled from about 30 images Including the separate exposures needed for the prominances around the outside. Warning this image is BIG. The full size image is approximately 3500x3200 and is about 1.4mb. I have not included the full size tiff version here as it is 65megabytes.

For those that are on slower connection I have included a half size version that is about 450kb. The one on the left is the smaller one the one on the right is 1.4mb. 

Its July 5 - 2010 and I finally had a short opportunity to image the sun for the first time in ages. Here is the feature designated AR 1084.  I only had a short window of opportunity before the clouds rolled in. The sun was low in the horizon. 

This was taken with the usual equipment: DMK 41 Mono camera on a lunt LS60THa

With the DMK41 on the Lunt LS60THa Solar scope you juust miss out on capturing the full disk. I manged to get it working using an AstroPhysics  .67 Reducer but had to mount the camera much closer to the reducer. 

The most dificult part was getting the camera close enough to the reducer so that I could still achieve in-focus. I did it with about 3mm of focus travel left and that gives me the full disk using up nearly the full frame with enough room to show large prominences. I only managed to get it working because I hapenned to have a very narrow profile 2"-1.25 adaptor. Most of the standard ones are a bit deeper and that resulted in the ccd being just that bit more further away and not being able to acheive focus. I fitted a 2 in tube to the blocking filter, slide the reducer inside the tube, then locked it in place with a nrrow profile  2 "-1.25 eyepiece adaptor.

I had some time off work and of course for the first week the weather was overcast and we got some welcome rain. This however does not help with my imaging. Over the last few days the weather has cleared up nicely and I have had time to grab some shots of the sun. The images below show various solar phenomenum that took place during March 11-19 in 2010.  The image on the second line is a very large prominence that I photographed on March 19. This is the biggest prominence I have seen to date. All images were taken with a DMK41 camera on the Lunt LS60THa solar scope.

Here are a couple of more images. of the sun taken on the 25th of January 2010. I have been experimenting with different exposures and techniques.

The full disk image is a single exposure using the QHY8 colour camera. It is deliberately overexposed to reveal the solar prominences around the edges and show an interesting side affect. A Ha image should be red only (like the outer part of the image), but when you overexpose to a massive degree, a small amount of light leaks into the green and blue channels, giving the image nice yellow colour on the core while the less bright regions remain pure red. I kinda like the affect. 

The second image is a close up of the active region 11041. This is a stack of the best of 200 frames taken with a DMK41 mono camera during quite bad seeing. 

In December of 2009 I purchased a Lunt LS60THa DS50.
The LS60THa is a complete Solar Telescope. It is a 60mm refractor-based system that has a precision aligned singlet chromatical lens. The focal length is 500mm providing a ~4.5 mm image thru a 6 mm blocking filter. Fine adjustment is achieved with a Crayford style focuser with a 10:1 reduction. An internal etalon with tune adjustment allows for a <0.8
 Angstrom bandpass.
The addition of the second 50mm Etalon gives you a <0.5 Angstrom bandpass. The Second etalon is usually used to bring out the surface details. I find that I tend to use the scope without the second etalon. This gives both excellent surface detail and high contrast prominences. Adding the second etalon, seems to bring out more surface detail, but it is a subtle difference. I will need to experiment more.

The images below represent my first full disk solar image. I used the LS60THa and the QHY8 cooled camera. As the Image is in narrowband Ha (Hydrogen Alpha) only red spectrum light comes through. The first image shows this image as you see it through the scope. The second image is the same image after dome digital processing to add fake colour and to bring out the details.

The image below was taken on the 28/23/2009 using the Gstar EX on the LUNT solar scope with a 2x barlow. After some processing you can easilly make out the filament in the key feature on the surface.  The image is a single frame with no stacking.

Here are some composite images showing both the prominences and the solar surface. To do this you have to take two exposusers: In order to capture a prominance, the suns surface is fully oververeposed so it is a solid white disk wit no surface detail. I then drop the camera back to a 1/1000th second exposure to capture the surface details. In post production both images are merged. The first image is the full disk. The second is a close up of the prominence you can just make out in the 8:00 position.

I am considering upgrading the camera to a more high resolution camera. The GSTAR EX is a good camera and has lots of nice features to allow me to occlude the solar disk and bring out the detail in the prominences, or highlights surface detail, etc. However it is a standard format video camera and I feel that you need a higher definition camera to capture more detail on the surface.

Lagoon Nebula - M8 (NGC 6523)

The Lagoon nebula is approximately 5,200 light years away. The full nebula is about 130 light years across. This image is of the cetral part of the lagoon nebula (approximately 1/3 to 1/2 of the full nebula).

 It was taken on from my suburban backyard obs on a nice cold winter night (about 3 degrees celsius). It was very low on the eastern horizon and I was not expecting to get that much detail but was pleasantly surprised.

The image is a total duration of 100 minutes exposure, about 25 x 5min on the 12" LX200R and a QHY8 Tec Cooled Camera. I did not take any darks (only because I forgot too, but the QHY8 camera is very forgiving with background noise as it is cooled to approximately -30C.

NGC 4945 in Centaurus

Now that I finally have the LX200R tracking properly, and I had a clear night last night, I had a go at imaging this spiral galaxy. As you can see I had a problem with an internal reflection from a bright object just out of field. I could have manually edited it out, but this was really a test run with the QHY8 TEC Cooled camera on the 12" scope. Now that it is tracking properly my stars are no longer elongated.

The galaxy is almost side on to us. It is 11.7 million light years away.   

The image is a stack of 15 x 5 min exposures and 5 x 5min darks. No Flats. It really needs more data, but clear skies are few and far between at the moment.

Full Moon

Well we finally got a clear night but it was also accompanied by a very bright full moon. I tried imaging a few fainter objects but the moon just kept getting in the way. So I decided to point the 12" LX200 with the QHY8 camera at the moon and take an image or two.

I ended up taking a 2x2 panorama. This image has been quite heavilly enhanced to bring out some details that you normally dont get to see with such a flat full moon. The saturation has also been boosted to highlight the various colours of different craters.

Click on the image below to see the smaller version of this panorama. The full size image (aprox 3400x3400) can be downloaded by right-clicking on the link below the image and selecting Save As.  This was just an experiment but it has motivated me to take a more detailed 4x4 panorama next chance I get.

Full size 809k jpeg

QHY8 Camera and 12" LX200R First Light

M83 Galaxy(QHY8 Camera First Light- more data added on March 28th 2009) Here is my second image using the QHY8 Tec Cooled Camera on the 12" Lx200r . It's the Southern Pinwheel galaxy(M83). The galaxy is about 15000 light years away. This is stack of about 3 hours (10x 15 min + 3 x 10 mins + darks + flats).  It has been fairly heavily processed to try and bring the details out of the murky sky. I appear to be having an RA distortion issue as well. Guiding was done through PHD Guider with a QHY5 guide camera an ED80. All seems to be working well. I had fine tuned the PEC and Polar alignment but I can't stop the stars from being elongated in RA. I think there might be some misalignment in the imaging train somewhere, others are indicating it may be due to flexure. The elongation of the stars does not seem to change with the exposure length (although I did not think to try a really short exposure to check out the theory of missaligned optics or camera somewhere).

Eta Carina Nebula This is another image I took on the same night to test the camera and scope. Its the heart of the eta carina nebula (the keyhole nebula). This is a created from a number of different length exposures ranging from 10 mins to 3 mins for a total of one hour. No Darks.

Cat On Guard in Observatory

I found the perfect sign to errect in my observatory and my cat is warning me to obey  .

Eta Carinathrough the ED80 (quickie)

Here is is another image I took on the first night out using the ED80 with a Canon 40D. It's the Eta Carina Nebula (NGC 3372) The Eta Carinae nebula is approximately 460 light years in diameter andis 8800 light years away. Itcan be seen with the naked eye as a grey cloud in the southern sky. It covers about three degrees of the sky. The imagewas created from 11 x 3 minute colour exposures at ISO800 with a canon 40D through the ED80 unguided. It was a full moon.

Orion Nebula (My First ED80 Image)

Here is my first processed image using the ED80 with a Canon 40D. It's the Orion Nebula (M42). The orion nebula is approximately 1300 light years away and 25 light years in diameter. It is one of the brightest nebilas in the sky. There wasa very bright full moon but I wanted to see how much of the nebula I could capture. The core is a little hot so there is no detail but I wanted to get more of the nebula in if I could. The image is composed of 9 x 3 minute subs at ISO600 along with 6 darks same exposure and no flats. Stacked with Deep Sky Staker and Levels adjustedin Paint Shop Pro.

Other things that have been going on:

• I haveconpleted construction of a backyard observatory. This has been all consuming:You can see the completed Obs here or Contruction Info here
• On mymisc page you will find Images of my catsRommie and Twitch.
• In Astrophotography you will find Some of my first Astrophotography images (fuzzies). With winter and the construction of my obs and a particularly cloudy year, I have notdone anything new ina long time. I am hoping things will change with the completion of the obs.
• Under 3D you will find some of my rendered 3D models. These are a bit dated now. I dont really have the time or patience for this stuff any more and I have not done much in this field for quite a while.