ar11196 CaK Closeup

ar11196-cak, a photo by Mark Townley on Flickr.

This active region was crackling away with minor flare activity in this shot taken with the 100mm Tal refractor.

CaK Full Disk 9th March

CaK-full-disk-bw, a photo by Mark Townley on Flickr.

Sunday dawned with lovely blue skies and so I was keen to try out the latest embellishment of my homebrew CaK filter: Previous imaging runs had revealed problematical reflections and I had introduced some Schott BG25 glass in between the reflective elements of the filter train. This worked well in removing the reflection and generally increasing the contrast to the point the proms were fairly easily visible at CaK wavelengths.

ar11998 Ha 9th March

ar11998-ha, a photo by Mark Townley on Flickr.

This is the first real run from the 100mm PST mod this year, and when looking at the image on the screen i was initially disappointed and thought it was lacking in contrast, however after seeing the image that came out after post processing I was pleased with the result! I just wish I had taken a few more images at this wavelength on sunday.

Ha Full Disk 9th March

ha-full-disk, a photo by Mark Townley on Flickr.

Our star is looking great at Ha wavelengths at the moment in this shot taken with the Coronado DS40 @ f10 with the DMK31 camera.

CaK Flyby 1st march

cak-flyby, a photo by Mark Townley on Flickr.

This cropped shot taken with the 40mm at f20 really shows well how the homebrew caK filter is picking up the proms in this image. What looks like the spicule layer in Ha is easily visible, along with numerous prominences. I'm really looking forward to exploring and hopefully improving the capabilities of this filter as the year progresses, it's going to be am interesting one!

CaK Northern Hemisphere 1st march

cak-oop-north, a photo by Mark Townley on Flickr.

Here I upped the focal ratio of the 40mm up to f20 with the idea of making a higher resolution full disk. Alas the clouds were having different ideas, still I managed 2 panes. Note the proms are still easily visible.

CaK full Disk 1st March

cak-full-disk-colour, a photo by Mark Townley on Flickr.

Lots going on here - in particular note the proms visible all round the limb in this 'one shot' full disk! taken with the 40mm at f10.