Gallery XXVI

The first images with the Solarview 50

        I decided to use the break in the clouds to shoot the sun with the Meade Electroninc EP (a B&W 320x240 video camera) and the new SolarView 50 solar scope (50 mm H-alpha scope). I shot through a diagonal with an IR blocking filter in place and recorded to metal high 8 tape (over kill for this camera's resolution). I had the scope on the TeleVue Telepod and was not set up to do high magnification to try and see some detail. I was just trying to see if I could image with this scope. In that regard I was successful. When trying to image with a lap top the suns brightness makes it hard to see the screen and to focus. With the camcorder I was able to hold the camcorder in one hand, look in the camera's view port with a towel over my head, and focus or move the scope with my other hand. Clunky, but it worked. And it was much easier to see the image on the camcorder screen. It has been a bane of mine to try to get an image on the lap top that I can see and still be able to adjust the scope's focus. All that I had to do was: center the sun in the EP, replace the EP with the MEEP, focus, adjust contrast with the thumb wheel on the MEEP, and hit record. Not bad at all! Only the chip's small FOV and resolution were disappointments. I planned to try it wit a f6 Steve Mogg focal reducer but the clouds closed in.

        Later, in the comfort of my kitchen, I captured 5-10 second fragments of the video from the tape to my lap top with AstroVideo and the Imprex card as AVIs. These were 70-140 frames long (so it was grabbing at 14 fps). I Used AstroVideo with Drift align (aligning on a sun spot) to process these. I stacked either 70 or 140 frames. I also used the AstroVideo feature select sharpest to make a new AVI consisting of only the 10 sharpest frames. These were stacked using AstroVideo and manual align. I guess I should reprocess these with Registax 2.

140 frames

9 sharpest frames

        The rest of these are just the 10 sharpest frames.

Two runs were reprocessed with Registax 2 and wavelet filters were applied.

 

            Summary:

Take 2 - H alpha with the MEEP and Solarview 50 from 1/20/04

    Having replaced the batteries in the Tegul II mount, it functions. Roughly polar aligned, it was able to hold the sun fairly steady for 30-60 second long video runs. I placed it upon a Bogen camera tripod and mounted the SolarView 50 upon it. After first locating the sun with a 24 mm eyepiece - a televue 8-24mm zoom which at 24mm is nearly par focal with the MEEP - I tried to image the sun without success (image too bright?). So I added a 2x Meade "shorty" barlow, refocused and tried again. This time I was able to image. I  recorded to video tape as before and later captured the images at 15fps as AVIs with K3CCD via my ImperX card. Images were processed with Registax 2. The "wavelets" really brought out the detail in the filaments. The output of Registax 2 was "tweaked" in GIMP.

    There are a few large sun spot groups present on the solar surface at present. I hope that I've correctly identified these. The h alpha scope brought out the adjacent bright active regions and dark filaments that are hidden on white light views. Here are the processed results of 2 runs:

        These are two runs of the other large sun spot groups. I think that the largest spot is in 540. %43 and 540 have a dark halo around them which was readily apparent on the video image on the camcorder's viewer.

        There is a large filament near the edge of the sun. because of exposure factors, I was able to see only the portion of the filament that overlies the solar surface.  More detail was captured in the last run. Look at the filaments near the bottom center of the images. I'd hoped to push the image scale but clouds appeared. Oh if only this had more pixels!

        There were a few scattered filaments else where. Most were small but one was rather large.

        Summary:

 

 

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