Next are several close-up images take with the LS80 combined with a 2.5X Powermate, taking the focal length to 1400mm. I've been working on my solar processing techniques, which presents quite a few different challenges when compared to deep sky imaging. I've been messing with combinations of different filters along with using color balance shifting to add color to the images, as well as inverting the mono images to bring out more detail. While I like to see the images in color, I think it distracts from the detail.

AR1711 continues to make for interesting daily observations. Newcomer AR1719 is rotating into view and looks like it may make for some interesting images once the next round of weather clears out in, oh, 5 days or so. The first image here at the left is a full-disk mosaic created from four individual images and stitched together using Photoshop. The field of view of my Lunt LS80 solar scope and Point Grey Chameleon camera is too small to fit the entire disk, so mosaics are the only option to record the sun's full disk.

The next two images presented are the two aforementioned active areas. The first is AR1711, which has been slowing making its way across the sun's surface facing earth. While it has been very persistent and large, it hasn't been particularly active, so we have not been seeing any geomagnetic activity attributed to it.

The final image presented today is newcomer active region 1719. It has just come around the sun's limb and should be putting on a good show for us earthings for the next week or so.

Clicking on any of the thumbnails will take you to my Astrobin page, which details the imaging equipment and other aspects of each image.

At 800mm, the Solar Max II 90 is just a shade too long to fit the full disk of the sun onto the frame of this 1/1.8 size chip. The .5 reducer works fairly well, but I seem to lose a bit of detail As can be seen from the image at left, the surface shows quite well, but almost all of the prominence detail is lost. This reducer also shows that this scope has a sweet spot. I need to to shove the sun into one corner of the frame in order to get even illumination across the whole disk.

The image here at the right is a 4-panel mosaic using the SMII at its native focal length. I think this image shows quite a bit more detail that the image using the reducer. Sure, it could be the fact that the reducer was only $29, but I think it is partially due to the sweet spot that scope is exhibiting. This sweet spot is also apparent in the mosaic where the panels' brightness don't quite match up despite the exposure being the same.

Finally, as a bonus, here is a closer-up detail of one of the current solar active areas, I think is is AR1640. Just in the past few days spots have been popping up on the sun left and right and keeping straight which ones are which is a bit difficult. Especially when you have to deal with different orientations due to flipped images, etc.

This image was taken with the SMII as well, but using the Cemax 2X barlow that comes with the scope. The problem here is that the DMK51 camera has a maximum frame rate of only 12fps, which makes it hard for the camera to keep ahead of the seeing at longer focal lengths. I plan on picking up a Point Grey Flea 3 camera in the near future that cane record at 60fps at full resolution, which should help getting good images at longer focal lengths.

For those with the terms "single stack" and "double stack", it simply means the number of filters or etalons in front of the eyepiece or camera. A single stack scope has a single, internal etalon that provides about 0.7 angstroms bandpass, whereas a double stack has both the internal etalon and an external one that screws onto the front of the telescope that allows about a 0.5 angstrom bandpass. The result of this doublestacking is more detail, contrast and a somewhat darker image.

I think I might not have had the tuning quite right on the DS image. Going back over some of my previous images, I see that the detail that I've been able to pull out of the surface with the DS is much better than is shown here.

Regardless, there is a marked difference in the amount of contrast available with the double stack, even with the sub-optimal tuning.

The images here are some examples of the details that this "hydrogen alpha" telescope allows us to capture. Here you can see the mottling of the sun's surface, called spicules as well as the prominences along the edge of the disk. Many confuse these with solar flares. But, while promineces take shape and evolve over a matter of hours or even days, solar flares are much more energetic and happen over a much shorter time span. The dark worm-like "filaments" can also be see on the sun's surface, which are actually just prominences as seen from an overhead perspective.

The method of capturing these images is a bit different than that of imaging nebulae, galaxies and other dimmer "deep-sky" objects. Whereas with deep-sky images, a number of long exposures are taken and stacked to create a composite still image comprising hours of exposure, solar, lunar and planetary photography is done by taking video of the object. Since these are brighter objects that do not need long exposures to capture, we want to capture them in as close to real time as possible and try to negate the effects of having to look through Earth's atmosphere. This is done by taking many short images, or frames, in a video. These frames are then fed into a piece of software that grades them for clarity and sharpness and selects a percentage of best frames and throws the rest out. These best frames are then aligned and stacked to further eliminate noise and seeing conditions and composited into a still image. The stills are further processed to enhance the detail and in this case, falsely color the image to make the coloration look more like what the eye sees. The camera used is actually monochrome which captures greater detail than a color camera with a bayer filter in front of the sensor. The sensors in these cameras also tend to be smaller so that greater frame rates can be used. The full disk image at the top is actually a mosaic of four images which were stitched together with Photoshop. The others show the actual field of view of this scope/camera combination. It can almost, but not quite fit the whole disk.

This time of year is terribly frustrating because the sun is setting so early that I can't get out to the observatory on days that I work which relegates me to only doing solar imaging on the weekends. And, this fall has so far been the pits, at least on Saturdays and Sundays. I have not been able to do any captures since before Thanksgiving, but it looks like this weekend might offer some clear skies. Here's hoping...

I have been fighting a losing battle with European Starlings over my suet feeder that I have in place to attract woodpeckers, nuthatches, and other desirable birds. Unfortunately, these rats with wings have a taste for the peanut suet that I put out and if I put out a cake in a standard suet feeder, they'll devour it in less than a day. Short of a pellet gun, which my neighbors might not appreciate, I've been experimenting with some alternative suet feeder designs to try and stop the starlings.

I've noticed that while the starlings can cling, they can't do so nearly as well as the birds that I'm trying to attract with the suet. After a couple of design experiments, I think I've come up with one that, while it isn't stopping them, it certainly is slowing the starlings down. The picture at left (click for a larger version) is what they have to go through in order to get at the suet. They're having to hover and take quick stabs at it, but a few have learned to cling upside-down although they can't do it for very long. I can't help but think there's an easier source of food for the starlings. They're probably burning more energy getting at the suet than they're getting out of it.

The Downy Woodpecker here at the right shows them how it's done. The only problem now is that the downys tend to get scared off when the starlings approach, even though I can practically stand 5 feet away from the feeder and not bother them.

There's always the pellet gun. Since they don't belong here, I'm sure the ecosystem wouldn't miss a few dozen starlings.

Since the selection of narrowband targets in spring is slim, I turn to one of the last vestiges of winter, the constellationOrion and one of the most well-known dark nebulae, IC434, the Horsehead Nebula.

About 1500 light years from Earth, this is a smaller part of the huge Orion Molecular Cloud Complex that encompasses a good portion of the Orion constellation and consists of several different start forming regions, including the Messier 42, the Orion Nebula. While M42 is easily visible to the naked eye, the Horsehead is generally only visible in long-exposure photographs. Although, large aperture telescope and special filters may allow visual observers to see the outline. I, personally, have never see it.

This image is a stack of six 15-minute exposures through a 3nm Hydrogen Alpha filter. The telescope used is a Celestron HD1100 with an Apogee U16M CCD camera. Everything sits atop a Paramount ME german equatorial mount at Sugar Grove Observatory. The images were acquired using Maxim DL, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and post-processed with Photoshop CS5.

Click on any of the small images to see a larger size.

The first image seen here is using the Hubble color palette. So named for the color mapping used in Hubble Space Telescope images. Here the RGB color channels are mapped to SII, Ha, and OIII respectively, giving these images their distinctive gold hue.

This next image is presented in the CFHT (Canada France Hawaii Telescope) palette. Here the RGB colors are mapped to Ha, OIII, SII, respectively. This gives a bit more of a "natural" color appearance, although all the images here are false color images.

I don't know that this final color mapping has a name, as such. Here, the RGB channels are mapped to Ha, SII and OIII, respectively. This is probably my least favorite as it imparts too much of an orange hue to the image for my tastes.

Narrowband imaging can be quite rewarding in more than one way. Not only can you create some colorfully beautiful images, but it extends the amount of time that we have to do imaging as well as from where we can image. Because the bandpass of these images is so much, well, narrower than normal RGB filters, they can easily cut through the light pollution for an observatory located in the middle of a big city or through the sky glow of the full moon.