Solar Activity in Ha with the Tal100R Refractor - 17th June

I have found a bit of an unusual setup that I quite like in this years solar season; my trusty 100mm Tal100R refractor works particularly well when my double stacked Daystar Quark is used in conjunction with the 0.7x Baader solar telecompressor and the PGR Chameleon 3 camera with 2x2 binning.  This unlikely combination delivers a f43 beam into the etalons for a contrast rich view, the solar telecompressor then brings this back to a more manageable 3 metres focal length, which on days when the seeing is too bad for the 0.2m Airylab HaT gives some nice views.  Our star was looking very fiery with this setup on saturday.

Ha Full Disk - 17th June

In the absence of an 'in one' full disk setup that i'm currently happy with it means it has been a while since I got an overview of our star at 656nm.  Saturday offered plentiful clear skies with minimal haze (this can be seen as a 'glow' around the suns limb in places) and so I took the opportunity to use the 56mm scope, double stacked quark, baader solar telecompressor (0.7x) and the PGR Chameleon 3 with 2x2 binning to get this mosaic.  It's reasonably large so is worth a double click on the image to see it in full size.

AR12663 in CaK - 17th June

This is by far the most active region on the sun at the moment, with it's trailing wake of plage.  There were just about some nice details visible in this shot taken with the 100mm Tal100R stopped down to 80mm using a Beloptik Tri-Band ERF, home brew CaK filter and the PGR Chameleon 3 camera.

AR12662 in CaK - 17th June

A couple of shots of this solitary spot and its associated active region taken with the 100mm Tal100R telescope stopped down to 80mm with the Beloptik tri-band, and, using the home brew CaK filter and the PGR Chameleon 3 camera.  On one of the hottest days of the year so far seeing was deteriorating quickly and so was not able to try larger apertures in these short wavelengths.

CaK Full Disk - 17th June

Considering we are heading towards solar minimum there is still a pleasant amount of activity visible on our star!  Taken with the 40mm scope at 500mm focal length with the homebrew CaK filter and the PGR Chameleon 3 camera.

CaK Full Disk - 16th June

Finally some sun!  Work has been manic lately, and the morning skies whilst clear at 5am seem to have clouded up by 7am not leaving a big window for imaging.  Today there was high cloud and the transparency wasn't great but the seeing with small apertures was OK.  This was taken with the 40mm scope at 500mm focal length with the home brew CaK filter and the PGR Chameleon 3 camera.  Nice to see a bit of activity on the suns disk too!  Hoping to get a bit more chance for imaging over the weekend, forecast is allegedly good!  

AR12661 in Ha - 4th June

This active region that has rotated into view only recently spewed off a near M class flare in the hours preceding this image being taken and looked to be very lively at the time, with lots of swirling plasma, and, in this image taken with the double stack system the sunspot itself virtually hidden as a photospheric feature.  The seeing was variable in the rapidly bubbling up cloud in an unstable atmosphere, and I took several shots with this one coming out the best.  The 203mm Airylab HaT was used, along with a Double Stacked Daystar Quark, a Baader solar Telecompressor to bring the focal length down to about 4250mm.  The PGR Chameleon 3 was used with 2x2 binning to give effective 6.9um pixels, short 3ms exposure and 120fps with the latest version of firecapture.