Conditions were surprisingly good when I imaged active region 12526, so much so pretty much all the frames I took in the sequence were good enough to make an animation from. This spans some 15 minutes of real time on the sun and is made up from 20 individual frames. The plasma dances round abundantly throughout the image, but of particular interest are the running penumbral waves, pulses of energy passing through the penumbral and super penumbral filaments at between 10 and 50 km/sec. Taken with the Airylab HaT at 4.4m focal length with a Daystar Quark and the PGR Blackfly GigE IMX249 camera.
Not much happening on the sun at the moment, just the single spot and active region AR12526 mid disk, and some filaments. Even the prominences are all small at the moment. Taken with the triple stacked 40mm scope at 700mm focal length with the PGR Blackfly GigE IMX249 camera.
A close up of this rather quiet active region with the HaT. The day was dominated by predominantly cloudy skies, with occasional fleeting gaps. This was about as good as it was getting, but nice to see the spot!
Any sunshine was quite sparse on Easter monday, but I did manage a few images late in the afternoon. The seeing really wasn't up to using the HaT to it's full potential, but it does get some nice image scale on these smaller scale features as we move into solar minimum.
Todays full disk in Ha was looking quite nice, with plenty of detail mid disk in the northern hemisphere and new double spotted active region AR12524 just appearing on the eastern limb giving us something to look at in the days ahead. Taken with the 40mm triple stack at 700mm focal length with the PGR Blackfly GigE IMX249 camera.
The sun was low and the transparency poor at 5pm this afternoon meaning I really had to lift the gain on the PGR Blackfly camera, but this disk came out ok. AR12524 that has appeared on the north eastern limb is a real monster of a spot, and weather permitting should be very photogenic in the days ahead. Taken with the homebrew CaK filter and the 40mm scope at 700mm focal length.
The evenings and mornings are really starting to stretch out now; it was nice to be able to get back from work this afternoon and be able to observe the sun with a bit of altitude in the sky. I got the triple stacked 40mm Coronado scope out and for a while it was just nice to stand and relax and look through the eyepiece. With clouds scudding by I decided to get a disk to get a record of what our star looked like today. Taken at 700mm focal length with the PGR Blackly GigE IMX249 camera.
These animations each represent a mere 4 minute period on the surface of our star, showing just how dynamic and ever changing it is. You can see how the seeing varies rapidly from frame to frame but it captures well the turbulent plasma. Taken with the Airylab HaT at 5600mm focal length with the double stacked daystar quark and the the PGR Blackfly GigE IMX249 camera.
Some different views here of AR12519 taken with the Airylab HaT on 13th March at 5600mm focal length with the PGR Blackfly GigE IMX249 camera. The first is a double stack view with the Daystar Quark and a PST etalon. The second is a 4 minute animation of the region with the above setup, it shows really quite a bit of dynamic movement at this scale. The third image is taken with only the Daystar Quark in single stack mode.
This active region was proving elusive for me all day on sunday, every time I tried to shoot it the seeing went west and blurred the finer detail that was there. Taken with the Airlylab HaT and Daystar Quark with the PGR Blackfly GigE IMX249 camera at 5600mm focal length.
Activity is becoming scarce as we head past solar maximum, but the enhanced contrast of the triple stacked 40mm scope really does make the small filaments and active regions really pop out. Taken at 700mm focal length with the PGR Blackfly GigE IMX249 CMOS camera.
All the activity is still in the solar northern hemisphere as can be seen in this full disk taken with the 40mm scope at 700mm focal length with the homebrew CaK filter with the PGR Blackfly GigE IMX249 camera.
A medium scale close up of this pair of active regions taken with the 60mm scope at 1900mm focal length with the homebrew CaK filter and the PGR Blackfly GigE IMX249 camera.
This was the first image I took with the HaT on saturday morning in between the passing clouds, again while not perfect is one of the best images I got from the session on saturday. Taken with the Airylab HaT, 203mm at 4.4m focal length, taken with the Daystar Quark and PGR Blackfly GigE IMX249 camera.
Seeing conditions weren't ideal in this image, the spicules are blurred on the limb but is interesting to see the image scale the HaT presents. Taken at 203mm aperture, just over 4m focal length with the Daystar Quark and the PGR Blackfly GigE IMX249 camera.
This was one of the better images I got with the HaT on saturday, and starts to hint at the levels of detail that are possible with this system. Taken at 203mm aperture at just over 4 metres focal length with the PPGR Blackfly IMX249 GigE camera with a Daystar Quark for the etalon.
Conditions were far from ideal when today's images were taken, see the picture below from SAT24, it was a case of catching the blue gaps in between the clouds, and there were lots of clouds and not many blue bits! Seeing was best described as variably poor! This represented the first proper outing for my new Airylab HaT, a custom modified Celestron C8 Edge HD scope with 203mm aperture. Using the Baader Solar Telecompressor I am able to run it at around just over 4 metres focal length, at around f20, which gives a nice image scale with the PGR Blackfly IMX249 GigE camera. The image is soft, but this shows the image scale nicely.
A couple more shots from sunday afternoon. Not perfect by any stretch given the conditions, but better than nothing!
