And don't compare it to the photos at the top of this page. Note the odd patches of short dark lines in the photo. I emailed Lunt about repairs for the LS50F.Ībove are a fair representation of the view through the double-stacked Lunt and B600 blocking filter after the accident without a camera or eyepiece and a photo of the Sun made with the decontacted external etalon. The single-etalon 'scope works just fine. I'm thinking the DS50F has a decontacted etalon - I can't get focus with it in place, and the view through the blocking filter is not of red solar images but a series of red lines. The scope cover had acted like a sail and a sharp gust had taken the kit to the ground.

When I went outside an hour or two later to check on the deep-sky kit's readiness, I saw the solar outfit tipped over.

Apparently, the solar 'scope on its tripod and Meade LX55 was close to tipping down the hill in the first place. Disaster! I uncovered the Ritchey so it could dry out for tonight and draped the cover over the solar telescope to keep it off the ground. Lunt Solar Systems LS60THa50DS, PGR Chameleon, 300 frames at 15fps, 4.8ms, 12db, carried on a Meade LXD55 equatorial mount. Everybody needs a hobby and solar photography counts as about five.Īnd farewell to AR11302 as it retreats toward the limb throwing one last flare, followed by two tiny active regions - not quite Earth-sized - and their feeble, million megaton sparks: The prominence clip has about 30x the exposure of the disk clip (60ms 17db gain vs 4.8ms 12db), both reduced in AviStack 2, then wavelets in Registax 6, then Focus Magic as a plugin to Photoshop. A very steady few minutes let me get this photo of tall prominences and a tiny sunspot with a crown of low-level (~B6) flares (AR 11308). It's going to take some time to do this justice. The show lasted about 8 minutes and I was grabbing and saving 300 frame clips from the time I saw it until I thought the show was mostly over. I haven't decided how best to present the images from nothing-to-see-here to full-on M1.4 flare to fading hot spots. In one of them, the flare changes from a single loop to a double loop of brilliant plasma in the 20s between start- and stop-recording. I shot 12 video clips as it developed and faded. When I got back to the active region, a very bright flare was in progress. Fortunately, I found little to linger over.

I went out to take a photo of the Sun, got one of active region 11302 in the can, and then spent 2 minutes scanning the rest of the Sun for something worth shooting.

Saving registax 6 wavelets