Yesterday's sun

Yep, you're right Albert. When I saw you're post I was out to the garden every 15 minutes to try and catch a break in the clouds. I must say that I pleasantly surprised by the views; The sunspot is breaking up rapidly now. Seems to have stetched out and a divide is appearing. I wasn't expecting so much activity.

Alas, I couldn't get any shots with the 7D before clouds came in but I did get some in time with the NexImage which turned out nicely.
Here is one taken at F13.6, I believe that magnification is in the region of 190x.

www.flickr.com/photos/67953577@N00/182472852/

These next two were at F20.4. I'm surprised that the image came out so well at this magnification. It didn't look
great visually at this (about 280x).

www.flickr.com/photos/67953577@N00/182472848/
www.flickr.com/photos/67953577@N00/182472849/

Hopefully I'll be able to check it on a daily basis, weather permitting.

Cheers,

Trev

Nice work guys! Who says astronomy can only be done at night?!?!

Trevor,
your pictures look great!

Sorry, me again with more of 898!

Cheers Seanie, solar seemed to be the only way to get to use the scope recently Good ol' Irish weather eh?

I checked the disc again this morning. Still lots of activity occuring. It's split into one large area and a smaller one. The larger area has 3 distinct dark patches and seems to be breaking up itself. It's getting very close to the edge of the disc now & has developed a delta class magnetic field so there is a possibility of some M class flares from it for the h-alpha guys.

899 has also appeared but is far smaller.

Here is a composite of 3 images showing the change over the past 6 days.

www.flickr.com/photos/67953577@N00/184028928/

Here are some full shots. Again one image is at F13.6 and the other is at F20.4. Captured with the same NexImage setup stacked with Registax. Flats applied. Most vids were between 450 & 650 frames.

www.flickr.com/photos/67953577@N00/184028895/
www.flickr.com/photos/67953577@N00/184028853/

Very happy with the NexImage so far. So much easier to control than the Quickcam & so much handier than the SLR. Can't wait to try it on Jupiter.

& here's an animated GIF from Spaceweather.

spaceweather3.com/swpod2006/06jul06/Vercoutter.gif

Cheers,

Trev

Nice images Trev,

I've been watching this since last saturday. Any more details on the kit you're using??

Thanks John,

The equipment I used was,

- Televue Ranger ED refractor 70mm/480mm with a 3x barlow for the closeups and a 2x for the other shots.
- Baader ND3.8 Astrosolar filter on the front (the photographic version).

On the eyepiece end:
- IR cutoff filter
- Baader Continuum. The continuum seems to help some with the contrast. It colours everything green but still gives a very pleasing image.
When observing visually I also add a mild neutral density filter to this as ND3.8 was designed for photographic use.

For the full disc the shots were taken with the Minolta Dynax 7D, but it's difficult to setup on the refractor due to it's weight and required focus travel, so the next shots were taken with a celestron NexImage, which I believe is a repackaged Toucam 840.

Oh, it's mounted on the CG5-GT.

Also the processing method I used is described here thelunarscape.com/TheLunarScape/SolarWorkflow.htm#Workflow

Cheers,

Trev

I got a glimpse of this thrtough the scope 2 days ago, its very noticable and at the time there was a small scattering near the limb also.