Category: Solar scraps

big fields of faculae around this group. To the south of 652 was another group of faculae visible. I tried other magnifications, but the best view visual was with the 32mm Televue plossl. There was great detail in the sunspots and faculae.

In the 4-inch TAL refractor, the image of the Sun is small, with some sky left around it. This telescope gives a more “stable” view of the Sun, compared to the 8-inch Klevtzov. The 4-inch is my favourite for observing the Sun. The fringe Killer softened the colour fringe around the Sun, but the colour fringe did not completely disappear. 

With the Baader Continuum filter the views are even better. The sunspots, faculae and granulation ore shown some more contrast. The green image is very pleasing to the eyes. I prefer this to the white light image.

Later I shot some images of the sun, but the 32mm is not very useful. I did not get any satisfying results with this eyepiece. With the 25mm Vixen Lanthanum, the results immediately improved. I got the best overall pictures in white light with the following settings: f 4.7, ISO 100, 1/2000s, spot metering. With the Baader Continuum filter in place I used the following setting: f 4.2, ISO 100, 1/60s, spot metering.

On the digital images I noticed a difference with the visual observing I made. On the photographs, the details are better in white light, while observing visually the details are better when using the Continuum filter. The next time I will shoot the white light images using the ND=5 solar filter and the “green light” (Continuum filter) will be used to shoot images using the ND=3.8 solar filter.

the TAL 100 RS (4-inch refractor), using a 10mm Vixen Lanthanum eyepiece (100x) I did not use any other filters than the Baader Kontinuum. The first three images are stacked out of 15 originals (1600 x 1200, f 5.1, 1/500s, ISO 100) using Keiths Image Stacker. Both images where processed with image processing software (unsharp masking, contrast +15, and resizing). The fourth image was stacked out of 35 images (1600 x 1200, f 5.1, 1/30s, ISO 100).

In the first image I left the original colour (green from the Kontinuum filter), in the second image I converted the first image into greyscale. The third and fourth image are in original colour again. For a first result, they look very promising. On the first image, a hint of granulation can be seen. Also notice the sunspot on the suns limb.

25mm Vixen Lanthanum ( 80x ) with a Baader contrast booster and a Baader IR/UV blocking filter attached to it.  The images where shot with the Nikon Coolpix 4500 at maximum resolution (2272 x 1704). Both images are stacked out of 5, using Keith’s Image Stacker. On both images I used unsharp masking.

The first image is an overview image of the Sun (Exp. 1/250s, f 3.0, ISO 100)

The second image shows the sunspots more detailed (25mm eyepiece, but with 4x optical zoom from the Nikon Coolpix (Exp. 1/60, f 5.1, ISO 100).