Coronado PST + SPC900NC: Solar Prominences 2 August 2009

Hello,

Overcast conditions now in central UK. However, a small patch of blue sky this morning gave a 1 minute window-of-opportunity to image the bright prominence currently on the South-West limb:

Imaged with -
40mm Coronado PST.
SPC900NC Webcam.

Processed with -
HandyAVI video capture software.
Registax 5.
Photoshop Elements.



Kindest regards,


Dave

Fantastic image Dave. I didn't know one could get such great results with the humble 40mm Coronado and SPC900. One of these days, I am going to have to get into this H-Alpha stuff!

Hi Calibos,

If you are thinking about getting into h-alpha I would certainly recommend the PST. It's a really nice instrument for solar imaging.

I've taken lots more photo's with the PST; please see link below -

www.flickr.com/photos/astronomer_dave

Thank you for your enthusiasm and reply.

Kindest regards,

Dave

Hi Dave

Nice to see you in here at last another great image. !!

Total cloud this afternoon , not a chance of a sketch.
I hope someone in New York has a PST so I can try a sketch or two

I look forward to many more posts of your imaging .

Deirdre

Outreach Coordinator IFAS
www.irishastronomy.org/
www.deirdrekelleghan.com/
twitter.com/skysketcher

Hi Dave.
Welcome to the boards.

Very nice capture there.
Do you have the PST mounted on a tracking platform?

Hi Barberskum,

Thank you for your welcome.

My PST is currently attached to an undriven equatorial mount that a friend gave me (it used to carry a small 60mm refractor).

The h-alpha images are captured using HandyAVI. A 200-frame video is exposed for prominence detail and a 200-frame video is exposed for disk detail. At 30 frames per second this simply involves manually turning the RA axis for almost 7 seconds to keep the image more of less stationary from frame to frame.

One day I may get around to buying an electric clock driven mount for the PST but at the moment this manual procedure seems to work fine.

The two videos are then processed separately with Registax 5 (used to align the frames) and then wavelets are applied to sharpen the final images.

I then use Photoshop Elements 4 to combine both the disk detail and prominence detail into one image.

In the past I have attached the PST to my 8" Meade but have found that for speed of use, convenience and portability a simple 'manual' equatorial mount is all one needs.

Kindest regards,

Dave