Solstice System Synergy - 21st June

I think I have found a rather nice bit of system synergy here. My CaK filter and the ZWO183mm capture really like a f15 beam coming into them. Using the ED80 stopped down to 40mm gives me that f15, and the resultant image has quite a lot of contrast, and also surprising amount of detail for 40mm aperture. Running the 183mm capture in 16 bit mode (12bit on the camera ADC) seems to give oodles of headroom in the highlights and it is really diffucult to clip the histogram. This has the result of the chromospheric network and plage really popping out, seems to have lots of potential for further exploring!

Ha Overview 19th June

After absolutely awful weather on Saturday, Sunday offered somewhat better conditions, and while it was far from wall to wall sunshine there were some decent cloud breaks at times earlier in the morning which allowed me to get some Ha shots at a variety of scales.

Ha Full Disk 17th June

I managed to get a quick Ha full disk before work on Friday morning. Taken with the double stacked Lunt50 etalons on the 60mm f6 scope, 2x cemax barlow and the ZWO183mm camera using 2x binning. I'm quite liking the results I get with the 2x binning, and continue to explore this method with the Ha full disks.

Solar Overview 16th June

I managed to get out of work relatively early and with clear skies I couldn't resist a look at the sun! Seeing wasn't great so stuck to 50mm aperture in Ha and 40mm aperture in CaK, but still gives a nice overview of what is currently a busy sun!

Daystar Quark - Single Stack / Double Stack Comparison - 12th June

I decided to do a comparison with my Quark native single stack, and then double stacking it with a naked PST etalon. There's no flats etc applied to the images and both SS and DS so excuse the dust bunnies, I need to clean the chip, it's the first time i've used the IMX174 chipped PGR in a while. Both the SS and DS images were processed identically in each pair, same sharpening, same stretch. What was apparent is there is more dynamic range in the DS data, it takes up a wider portion of the histogram. I used the same exposure (8ms) for both, just increased the gain in the DS image to get same brightness on the histogram. I like the single stack, but the double stack is my preference! The Quark setup looks like this:

CaK Full Disk 12th June

Taken with the 100mm f8 APM stopped down to 60mm aperture alomg with the homebrew CaK filter and the ZWO 183mm camera.

CaK Full Disk 10th June

Been difficult to find the time to image recently, with poor weather and lack of time. I did manage to get a quick full disk with the Coronado 40mm at f22 using the ICX814 chipped PGR camera before I went into work. It is a nice way to start the day like this!