Pushing it to the heat-limit, getting as close to the sun as possible - AR3112, Filament and Prominence on 20221008

Last Saturday afternoon (20221008) was my first ‘real’ go at imaging the sun.  Armed with my, now fully appointed as, ‘Solar Telescope’, a DayStar Quark Combo and a couple of Barlows (2x, 3x), I tried several shots of the sun at different magnifications and resolutions, aiming for the interesting AR3112 region and a very ‘prominent’ prominence down south on the sun. Generally video-capture was at 1080p or 720p, but to push this to the limit, I zoomed in on one of the prominences at 480p … just to see what was possible

In the endeavour, I also tried to compile a manual sequence of shots, laying the groundworks for trying to construct a Timelapse. The sequence only covered a short period of time, just a mere 20 minutes, spread over 5-7 frames, but it already shows some of the movements of these structures on the sun … just incredible to see, knowing that these are many times the size of the earth.

Sadly, I didn’t get PiPP working through the windows emulator on my Mac, spend quite some time trying to figure out how to resolve this. But in the end, I had to compile the Timelapse manually …

Happy with this jumpstart into the blazing sun, though

TechnoSky102/1100, Barlow 3x (f33), ASI 174MM, EQ6R-Pro, D-ERF, DayStar Quark Combo
AR3112 - 20221008 16:47 1080p 5ms G200 30s
AR3112 - 20221008 16:51 720p 5ms G200 30s
Filament - 20221008 17:17 1080p 7ms G200 30s - Inverted Colours
Prominence - 20221008 17:24 720p 18ms G200 15s - Main image
Prominence - 20221008 17:35 480p 18ms G200 15s
AutoStakkert, PixInsight / TimeLapses: ImPPG, Adobe Premiere Pro

The timelapses only cover a very short timespan, but for me the importance was to learn the technique of being able to capture this … and experience the bewildering amazement of being able to see our Sun in motion

Any constructive guidance is welcome …

Clear Skies everybody! 🤩✨🔭

Follow me @astrowaut