Solar Full Disk 24th February 2011

Well it has been over a week since i've been able to observe the sun given the grey skies that have predominated of late.  However thursday 24th proved to be the best day for a while.  The skies were milky with some high level haze that was apparent drifting over the solar disk when looking in the eyepiece.  Over the last 10 days there have been 2 monster active regions on the sun, one of which blasted off the largest X-class flare since december 2006.  This blast was directed squarely at earth and resulted in some beautiful auroras, seen in Northern Ireland and Scotland, given their altitude in the sky, if it had been clear down here in the Midlands, there was a decent chance that from dark skies they would have been visible.

I took a number of images yesterday, including some with my new Lunt solar wedge, however the sky was very turbulent and it was only the low power full disk view that came out well.  The image below was taken with my DS40 @420mm fl with the DMK31.  This is my first mosaic image, 2 panes that were assembled in CS4.  This took some time as the poor sky transparency meant the 2 panes had differing brightnesses, however in the end I got there and now have developed a 'method' that works for me joining images in photoshop.  Ultimately I want to get the larger chipped DMK41 camera, as at this native focal length I will be able to get the full disk in one shot - much less hassle in the post processing department!



Hope you like this image anyway, the full size hi-res file can be found here - I think it does it much more justice!  Let's hope for more clear skies soon!