Sun, 2019-04-10, Solar Continuum First Light (Michael Timm)

Sun, 2019-04-10, Solar Continuum First Light

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

Today was a day i will remember.

First, the amazing people working at the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) held their press conference and showed us the first image of a black hole ever (the one that is the core of often imaged Messier 87). I watched their livestream and it was simply great.

Second, i gave my new solar imaging equipment a try. I recently bought the BDSF 200mm for my 8" RC and the 2" solar continuum filter. I always wanted to image the sun and because i own a telescope with a fairly long focal length (1624mm) and a not so small aperture of 20cm i thought it would be a good idea to buy the needed filters instead of a dedicated solar scope. The conditions were not good, i had to image through cloud gaps and was a little late (the press conference was at 15 o clock in my place), so the sun was not as high as it could have been. Though at the moment the sun has an activity minimum, i am very happy that the sunspot AR 2738 showed up - just in time when my new equipment arrived ;-)

So please enjoy my first solar image ever. I do not know how to process it properly (will have to learn that) so i guess that there was more possible. I also think that i exposed too long (2ms) because the center of the sun is just flat and shows no structures. And maybe my settings weren't ideal too - is it correct to image the sun at unity gain? My processing was easy: Load the sequence into AutoStakkert, apply a prebuilt masterflat, stack, load the image into PI, apply some noise reduction and sharpening, enhance contrast with CurvesTransformation, load the image into GIMP, change the color setting (turns green into yellow) and done! If someone has a good tutorial at hand (or helpful hints) for processing solar images taken with the solar continuum i would be glad to get the link (or the info) ;-)

Final
Original
B

B

Description: Crop on AR 2738 (taken from another sequence).

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Cooled Color Cams
Solar System Imaging
"Nordish by nature"
The OSC Club (One Shot Camera)
Ritchey Chretien telescopes GSO Family
ZWO ASI 294MC PRO

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