Category: Solar log

a 20mm Vixen Lanthanum eyepiece.

There where several groups of sunspots visible as you can see on the overview image below. Near the western limb you can see sunspot group 671. just left of the centre are two groups visible, 667 and 669. On the eastern limb you can see sunspot group 672 just on the edge. The image was shot with a shutter speed of 1/1000 second and the ND 5 Baader Astro Solar Screen.

On the image below shows a more detailed view of the western limb. This image was shot with a shutter speed of 1/2000 second and the ND 3.8 Baader Astro Solar Screen. Near the limb you can see sunspot group 671. To the right you can see two groups of sunspots, 667 being the lower, round sunspot and 669 the upper, more elongated sunspot.

The last two images where shot with 4x optical zoom. The first image was shot with the Baader Astro Solar screen ND 5 and the second with the ND 3.8. The image taken with the ND 5 needed a shutter speed of 1/125 second. Otherwise the image would be to dark. The image taken with the ND 3.8 ND 3.8 was shot with a shutter time of 1/2000 second! This shows that with the Baader Astro ND 3.8 you can use much shorter exposure times, even when you zoom in at a relatively small area on the Sun’s surface.

magnification of 33x (Plossl 32mm) the granulation of the Sun was visible at once. On the eastern half of the Sun (left of the image below) sunspot 667 was visible with a huge area with faculae between the sunspot and the eastern limb of the sun. At higher magnifications (80X to 100x with Vixen Lanthanum eyepieces 12mm and 10mm) the big sunspot of group 667 seemed to bet into 4 pieces by three light-bridges. A hint of these light-bridges can be seen on the detailed (green) image of the Sun.

The overview image below was shot with the TAL 100RS 4 inch refractor and a 32mm Televue Plossl eyepiece, Nikon Coolpix 4500 and the following settings: 1600x1200, Image Quality: fine, shooting mode S, Focus Mode: Auto, shutter speed 1/250, aperture 3.8, ISO 100, optical zoom 2x, matrix metering. Filters: IR/UV cut, Fringe Killer, Contrast Booster and full aperture Baader ND5 Solar Screen.

The image was stacked out of 20 images using Keith’s Image Stacker. With Photoshop unsharp masking was set to 192% (amount) and 3.0 pixels (radius), contrast +12, brightness -7.

On the detailed image below you can see the largest member of sunspot group 667 with the faculae between the sunspot and the sun’s limb. You can also see the granulation. You can also see a hint of the three light-bridges that cut the umbra of this sunspot into 4 parts. I couldn’t get a better image, but visually these light-bridges where very easy to detect. 

The detailed image below was shot with the TAL 100RS 4 inch refractor and a 15mm Vixen Lanthanum eyepiece, Nikon Coolpix 4500 and the following settings: 1600x1200, Image Quality: fine, shooting mode S, Focus Mode: Auto, shutter speed 1/60 aperture 5.1, ISO 100, matrix metering. Filters: Baader continuum filter and full aperture Baader ND3.8 Solar Screen.

The image was stacked out of 19 images using Keith’s Image Stacker. The image was processed using Keith’s Image Stacker with the following settings: align 3, sort by difference, laplacian pyramid sharpen 1:67, 2:25, 3:41, 4:19, 5:8, 6:3, DC:1, Cutt-off:0. Adjust histogram levels: black 1270-4950.

the IR/UV cut filter. At 32x the suns granulation is at its best. It can be seen all across the surface of the sun. As you can see on the image below, there are 5 major groups of sunspots visible. In 661, the biggest sunspot visible, a lightbridge is clearly visible.

The image below was shot using the TAL 100RS, Baader ND 5 full aperture solar screen, the Baader Fringe Killer, IR/UV filter and Contrast Booster, and a 25mm Vixen Lanthanum eyepiece. The image is stacked out of 30 images that where shot with the Nikon Coolpix 4500 and the following settings: image quality fine, shooting mode S, focus mode Auto, shutter speed 1/500, aperture f 2.7, ISO 100, optical zoom 1, Metering matrix.

The 30 images where stacked, using Keith’s image stacker with the following settings: align 3, sort by difference, unsharp masking with radius 5 / intensity 10.4 and cut-off 0, adjust histogram levels red 0-8593, green 0-8121, blue 0-8256.