There was nothing to see on the face of the sun, but around the limb a nice area of proms were visible. Taken with the ED60 and the Daystar Quark. With a bit more time these would have probably made for a nice animation sequence.
The seeing was good so I decided to stack a 2.5x and 1.5x barlow with the ED60 stopped down to 40mm with the homebrew CaK filter and the FLIR GH3 ICX814 camera. Even looking up close these small regions of plage could be easily over looked.
There are 2 very small regions of plage approaching the solar limb but like in Ha the sun is essentially blank, typical of solar minimum. Taken with the ED60 stopped down to 40mm aperture with the homebrew CaK filter, a 2x cemax barlow and the FLIR GH3 ICX814 camera.
Today was a very good example of a solar minimum sun - there was nothing to see - nil, nada, nothing! Taken with a Lunt 50 etalon on the ED60 scope with a 2x cemax barlow using a FLIR GH3 ICX814 camera.
Taken with the ED60 stopped down to 40mm to cut back on the spherical aberration with this lens at full aperture, a 2.5x barlow was used to zoom in a little closer on AR12739 as it gets ever closer to the limb. The PGR Chameleon 3 camera was also used.
A bit of haze brightening the sky background this morning, but generally pretty clear skies. The sun is still blank and what activity there is marches ever closer to the limb. Taken with the ED60 stopped down to 40mm aperture, the home brew CaK filter, 2x Cemax barlow and the FLIR GH3 ICX814 camera.
Stopping the ED60 down to 40mm to reduce spherical aberration was definitely a good idea, and with excellent conditions the resulting disk is better than i've got in previous days. I still don't think it has the sharpness of my 40mm f10 scope, but the results are acceptable. Taken using the home brew CaK filter, 2x Cemax barlow and FLIR GH3 ICX814 camera. The disk shows nicely the activity about to pass over the limb, there were signs of a possible emerging flux region that developed in equatorial regions but this doesn't appear to have developed into anything overnight.
Over exposing a bit here to try and get as much detail on the limb as possible, the sun is going to be pretty quiet in a day or two, so decided to try and get a record of the active regions that have kept observers happy for the past couple of weeks. Taken using the same setup as in the previous image but using the Daystar Quark to double stack to bring out a bit more contrast and reduce continuum leakage.
There was very little on the face of the sun on friday so I decided to take a full disk with juts a single stacked Lunt etalon with the idea of seeing the small but plentiful array of proms that were around the limb. These are best viewed by double clicking the image and viewing full size. Taken with a Lunt50 etalon on the ED60 scope and FLIR GH3 ICX814 camera.
There was plenty of small scale activity heading towards the suns western limb today, with 2 active regions and a filament. Taken with the ED60 scope using a Lunt 50 etalon double stacked with a Daystar Quark and FLIR GH3 ICX814 camera showed up these details nicely. Sadly this activity will be gone again over the next couple of days and with nothing new coming around the opposite limb looks like we could be back to a blank sun again. Hopefully something that won't last too long!
The ED60 I used to take this image is loaded with spherical aberration at 393nm compared to some of my other scopes that gives a softness to the image that is not really possible to focus or sharpen away. Today I stopped it down to 40mm in an attempt to improve matters, and while this improved things it is still not a good performer as my 40mm f10, which, I think will become part of the travelling setup. There was plenty of haze today, which in CaK wavelengths has the effect of increasing exposure time. This image was taken with the 2x cemax barlow and the FLIR GH3 ICX814 camera along with the home brew CaK filter.
The sun was looking nice today - there was a nice flame prom on the eastern limb, but all the action was towards the western limb, with large active region AR12738 getting very close to passing over, but small possibly developing active region AR12739 despite being small was very bright. It and a small filament mark the boundary of a coronal hole. This image was taken with the LS50 etalon on the ED60 scope double stacked with the Daystar Quark. It is a mosaic comprising of four panels and was taken with the FLIR GH3 ICX814 camera.
My favourite double stack views at the moment are with my Lunt 50 etalon double stacked with a daystar Quark on the back of my Ed60 refractor, this gives a full disk view with a 32mm plossl eyepiece and maintains a good even field of field of view rich in contrast. I get a quarter disk when imaging with the FLIR GH3 ICX814 camera. If the clouds disappear for long enough it would be good to make a full disk mosaic using this setup.
The sun always looks nice when there's a large active region complete with spots and plage and todays sun fitted the bill. Taken with the ED60 at f12 this scope has noticeable more spherical aberration at 393nm than my other refractors, but with the Skywatcher AZ Gti mount makes for a very nice grab and go setup.
The sun was shining nicely in North Wales this morning, but being in the mountains makes for choppy seeing. I was trying out the portable rig - my Skywatcher AZ Gti mount, with the ED60 with a pair of double stacked Lunt 50 etalons on. It was difficult getting focus as i'd forgotten the sun shade for the laptop and the bright spring sunshine was blinding. However it was nice to be able to image AR12738 as it was squarely geo effective, maybe this will be the last big sunspot of cycle 24?
Visually saturdays prominences were great at the eyepiece on the Coronado SM90!
I got the opportunity on Saturday to test out a setup that i'd been wanting to use for a while with the FLIR GH3 ICX814 camera and the large chip it has. Using the 100mm Tal at 1000mm focal length allows me to still get the full disk on a single frame. The increased resolution of the 100mm means when the image is viewed full size both the spicule ring and also prominences are visible. There is a ghost image floating around in the bottom half of the frame that needs to be dealt with, but, on the whole i'm very pleased with this image.
I decided to try a shot of the departing active region in Sodium light. There was nothing to see apart from maybe 2 tiny pores. Taken with the 100mm Tal refractor and Sodium Quark along with the FLIR GH3 ICX 814 camera.
Prominences were the order of the day on Saturday; decaying AR12737 was approaching the limb, and apart from very small polar filaments the disk was essentially blank. All the action was on the limb though, with a number of prominences that visually were very impressive. Taken with a Lunt50 etalon on the Coronado SM90 and the FLIR GH3 ICX814 camera.
In a week this little active region started as an emerging flux region, developed into an active region with a number of small spots, and by now was decaying. This shot was taken as it approached the eastern limb with the SM90 double stacked with a daystar Quark. Seeing was far from ideal, and this image was by far the best of a number that was taken.
