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Archive 2017 · The Sun

StarNut
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · The Sun

My night-time equipment has been stuck in limbo as I move it from Australia to Arizona; but the sun finally shone at noon in Seattle last week, and I grabbed a few photons.

For your extra viewing pleasure, I have created a little white disc, on the lower right of the image, that is about the size of the earth relative to the sun. Those solar prominences are big!

http://www.de-regt.com/Astronomy/Sun.2017.05.23.50.Earth.jpg

Jun 01, 2017 at 10:37 PM

erielake
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · The Sun

that is a cool shot with the flares.....nicely done

Jun 02, 2017 at 05:53 AM

junglialoh
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · The Sun

Gorgeous image. Best ever!

Jun 02, 2017 at 06:06 AM

jforkner
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · The Sun

junglialoh wrote:
Gorgeous image. Best ever!

+1

Jack

Jun 02, 2017 at 07:40 AM

srabin
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · The Sun

Very nice. What equipment and settings did you use?

Jun 03, 2017 at 08:18 PM

Tom In Arizona
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · The Sun

Hi StarNut...

Now that's a great shot. I have no idea how you managed it, but it's a beautiful photograph. The inclusion of the white dot shows how relatively insignificant Earth is in relation to the Sun (and the rest of the universe).

Not sure where you're headed in Arizona, but we felt the heat of the Sun today when it hit 107-degrees in Phoenix...but as they say, it's a dry heat. Enjoy Seattle while you can.

Again, great work.
Thanks
Tom

Jun 03, 2017 at 08:35 PM

tmiller9
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · The Sun

Absolutely fascinating photograph. I feel very small right now.
I second the request - any insight on how you accomplished this would be greatly appreciated. Beautiful.

Todd

Jun 03, 2017 at 10:29 PM

dbehrens
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · The Sun

AWESOME!!! And how did you get that black background? Dave

Edited on Jun 04, 2017 at 09:00 AM · View previous versions

Jun 04, 2017 at 12:20 AM

Gregg B.
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · The Sun

Yes indeed this is a nice shot. I also have no idea how to capture such image. A total solar eclipse is coming so maybe you would shade some light?

Is this a big crop or you have some serious telephoto lens (perhaps mirror like).
Any detailed info about the technique would be appreciated, I'm sure to us all.
Thanks.

Jun 04, 2017 at 01:44 AM

StarNut
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · The Sun

Thanks, all!

In my quiver of telescopes, I have a Coronado SolarMax II 90, double-stacked. This is an f/8.8 telescope, with a 90mm objective lens, equipped with two layers of filters which only allow a tiny sliver of light through, in the "hydrogen alpha" part of the red part of the visible-light spectrum. Double-stacking results in a high-contrast image, with a band-pass of <.5 Angstrom. With such a narrow band, anything that's not really, really bright is black. Photographers can think of this as an 800mm f/8.8 lens, with a very, very narrow filter.

My camera is a very high quality video camera (Point Grey Research Grasshopper3 6mp CCD monochrome video camera (GS3-U3-60QS6M-C). I shoot a video for about 40 seconds, at about 25fps.

The telescope/camera rig sits on a mount that tracks the sun quite precisely, so that it moves very little on the sensor in the course of taking a number of 40-second videos.

We shoot video for this sort of astrophotography, because the air is so turbulent that we only get a relatively few sharp images; by taking a thousand images, I have some confidence that I'll get a couple hundred that are usable.

I import the video file into a piece of freeware called "Autostakkert!2," which analyzes the frames, picks the best 200, aligns and stacks them into one image, which I save in .tiff format.

I import the .tiff into a piece of freeware called "RegiStax6," which has a very sophisticated wave-analysis routine, which performs miracles in sharpening the image.

I then do a bit more work on the image in Photoshop CC 2017 (including colorizing the monochrome image).

Mark

Jun 04, 2017 at 06:00 PM

NCAndy
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · The Sun

Outstanding! Just when I think I know something about photography I read how this one was made. Incredible.

Jun 04, 2017 at 07:23 PM

tmiller9
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · The Sun

StarNut wrote:
Thanks, all!

In my quiver of telescopes, I have a Coronado SolarMax II 90, double-stacked. This is an f/8.8 telescope, with a 90mm objective lens, equipped with two layers of filters which only allow a tiny sliver of light through, in the "hydrogen alpha" part of the red part of the visible-light spectrum. Double-stacking results in a high-contrast image, with a band-pass of <.5 Angstrom. With such a narrow band, anything that's not really, really bright is black. Photographers can think of this as an 800mm f/8.8 lens, with a very, very narrow filter.

My camera is a very high quality video...Show more →

OK - you win.
Excellent!!!!

Jun 04, 2017 at 07:55 PM

Tom In Arizona
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · The Sun

Tom

Jun 04, 2017 at 07:59 PM

StarNut
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · The Sun

Tom In Arizona wrote:
Hi Mark...

Well, if it's that easy...I may try it myself.

Tom

Heck, Tom, compared to my "normal" astro-image, a solar image is a piece of cake! A solar image takes a few minutes for gathering the data, and at most two or three hours for processing. This one here (the central part of the area of the sky with the constellation Orion in it) took four years for data gathering, has about 130 hours of light-frame data included in it, and took at least 20-30 hours for processing:

http://www.de-regt.com/Astronomy/Orion.15.jpg

Jun 04, 2017 at 09:13 PM

MikeMancil
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · The Sun

Spectacular and humbling, both the grandeur of the scenes and your work effort... Mike

Jun 05, 2017 at 07:55 AM

Tom In Arizona
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · The Sun

StarNut wrote:
Heck, Tom, compared to my "normal" astro-image, a solar image is a piece of cake! A solar image takes a few minutes for gathering the data, and at most two or three hours for processing. This one here (the central part of the area of the sky with the constellation Orion in it) took four years for data gathering, has about 130 hours of light-frame data included in it, and took at least 20-30 hours for processing:

http://www.de-regt.com/Astronomy/Orion.15.jpg

Amazing work!!! Thanks for showing us a part of the world that we never see with such clarity.

Tom

Jun 05, 2017 at 08:01 AM

Bart Carrig
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · The Sun

In the words of ... someone ... "fascinating" !

Bart

Jun 05, 2017 at 06:39 PM

kmunroe
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · The Sun

a sweet shot Mark

Jun 06, 2017 at 03:37 AM

lighthound
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · The Sun

Was this handheld?

Absolutely amazing work Mark! I never get tired of viewing your incredible images.

Dave

Jun 06, 2017 at 08:20 AM

fredster
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · The Sun

This is great! you nailed it good!

Jun 06, 2017 at 09:43 AM


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