Contains:  Solar system body or event
Sunspot AR2738 at 6000mm (2019, April 14), Brent Newton

Sunspot AR2738 at 6000mm (2019, April 14)

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging
Sunspot AR2738 at 6000mm (2019, April 14), Brent Newton

Sunspot AR2738 at 6000mm (2019, April 14)

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

Solar imaging is not something I often do for reasons including cost of equipment and the fact that we are in a solar minimum. Still, even a cheap Astrozap mylar filter can turn an 8" SCT into a fairly decent photosphere imager. Despite the best efforts of turbulent KS air, I think I pulled out enough decent frames from an original 20,000 frame total to craft a decent image

Pre-Processing:
- PIPP for stabilization
- AS!3 for alignment and stacking using the top 5% of frames with a 3x Drizzle
Processed mostly in PixInsight:
- Extracted Luminance from the Color image
- Multiple passes of Restoration Filter and Deconvolution to recover detail
- MLT for slight noise reduction and enhancement of lower-level details
- Slight stretch with HT (reduced White Point), Curves for increased contrast
- Export to Photoshop

Photoshop Processing:
- Further Curves alterations for increased contrast using a mask to protect dark areas of the sunspot from clipping black
- High Pass with Overlay blending to sharpen smaller details
- Converted to RGB and added yellow color using custom Color Balance

Comments

Histogram

Sunspot AR2738 at 6000mm (2019, April 14), Brent Newton

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Central USA

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Solar