Just received a Lunt LS50tha SS w/B600 BF a couple weeks ago. It's pretty amazing what can be seen visually with a small aperture scope. Since I'm somewhat of a newbie to Solar imaging, I decided to use what mono camera I had on hand, a ASI120mm mini, and see how it would work with the scope. I used my asiair mini using video mode to collect 3000 frames and processed them through auutostakkert!4 software. I used several settings (e.g. best 25%, Best 15%, Best 100 frames, etc) and the top 60 frames ended up being the best. The image from AS had significant Newton's rings in it but I was able to eliminate the worst of them using ImageJ software - if you're interested, see the link found here
Trick for removing Newton's Rings / Fringes from images - Solar Observing and Imaging - Cloudy Nights. I then dropped the image in pixinsight and used process created by Bill Blanshan (and other's) called Solar Toolbox. Using the Solar Toolbox, I as able to get a lot more detail on the sun's surface as well as prominences, as well as colorize and do some fine tweaking to the image. You can watch his tutorial at
https://youtu.be/3yzfH5x5Smg?si=e6Ow8gJ0ARl9KAEB. Finally, I used photoshop to enlarge and resize the background to make the image a little more presentable. All in all I'm pretty pleased with how this image turned out ... thanks for taking a look.
Comments