Large Prominances Today - 04/04/2006

Quick snap I took just now with a Nikon Coolpix 775 held up to the 12.4mm eyepiece in the PST. To highlight the prominance, I removed all the solar disc bar the outer edge. It's the largest group of prominances I've seen to date.



Clear skies,

Lovely shot Mike!

Whoah! Stunning Michael :shock:

Better get the factor 30 on....

Quick snap I took just now with a Nikon Coolpix 775 held up to the 12.4mm eyepiece in the PST. To highlight the prominance, I removed all the solar disc bar the outer edge. It's the largest group of prominances I've seen to date. Clear skies,

Hi Michael,

Excellent shot! I've been looking at that prominence on and off this morning with my PST. I think it's the largest one I've seen as well.

I tried to take photos with my Olympus 765 but I just haven't got the hang of it yet as all I'm getting is an orange/red blob. What eyepiece are you using when taking photos (i.e. is it a Kellner, Plossl or Orthoscopic etc) and do you use manual settings or auto with the camera?

Thanks for the kind words everyone.

Gordon
I keep the camera on auto, but play with the bracketing setting. The Coolpix has a setting where you can adjust the exposure by up to + or - 2.0. I usually take a few shots at different settings and then use the one that suits me best. It depends alot on how much of the field of view the solar image takes up in the camera. The larger the image area, the faster the auto shutter speed will be. This then will decide what adjustment you place on the shutter speed.

Once I get the image, I split it into RGB. The red channel will contain all the detail of the prominences. The Green and the Blue will contain detail of the disc. For the above image, I just played with the Red. Stretched it a little, changed the colour of the disc to black, unsharp mask, converted it back to RGB and added a photo filter to it of the colour shown.

The 12.4mm eyepiece is the one which came with the scope.

If you need a little clarification on the above processing details, let me know.

Clear skies,

I keep the camera on auto, but play with the bracketing setting. The Coolpix has a setting where you can adjust the exposure by up to + or - 2.0. I usually take a few shots at different settings and then use the one that suits me best. It depends alot on how much of the field of view the solar image takes up in the camera. The larger the image area, the faster the auto shutter speed will be. This then will decide what adjustment you place on the shutter speed.
Once I get the image, I split it into RGB. The red channel will contain all the detail of the prominences. The Green and the Blue will contain detail of the disc. For the above image, I just played with the Red. Stretched it a little, changed the colour of the disc to black, unsharp mask, converted it back to RGB and added a photo filter to it of the colour shown.
The 12.4mm eyepiece is the one which came with the scope.
If you need a little clarification on the above processing details, let me know.Clear skies,

Thanks Michael. I'll study the camera manual and see what adjustments are available. I've been using my 8mm Radian and a Vixen 8-24mm zoom eyepiece but I'll try the Kellner that came with the scope now. Talk to you about processing when I get an image I can process!