Today was a race against time - i woke up this morning to perfectly blue skies, however work beckoned so off I had to go. However through the day a weather front was getting ever closer, slowly dropping transparency with a haze of thickening high cloud. By the time I did get home skies were hazy but this wasn't going to stop me, for a UK summer i've not got as much imaging in as I would like so have to capitalise on every opportunity.
This was a challenging image to get; a 6 pane mosaic, with each pane showing variations in brightness. In addition, the 2x nosepeice i'm using not only gives me Newtons rings, but also demonstrates quite noticeable field curavture across the frame. This manifests itself as a blurring in the mosaic joins. The 1.6x nosepeice I have been using is optically great, however doesn't give me the magnification i'm after - no such thing as a free lunch! I'm twitching to get a Meade 2x teleextender to rememdy these problems!
Todays sun is interesting though - the 'new spot' looks a nice and i'm sure is going to prove photogenic for many in the days ahead. Haze was robbing the shot of contrast and hiding the fainter proms and spicules, but some sun is better than no sun!
Hope you like!
Mark
