Thats a big ass sunspot

AR 2192 is actually naked eye visible, just wish my barlowed shot would have came out better, the wind started kicking up about the time I took the captured so it came out a bit noisy.

Who wants to play count the spots?

Lots of activity today, mostly in a double active region spitting excess amounts of xrays at us all day long but no real solar flares.  I took several captures but only one was really worth processing as the seeing conditions and humidity didn't cooperate very well, and a software glitch that left my full disc image too dark to process well.

Clear sky but breezy

Finally had a decent day with something worth imaging.  New active regions just coming around the limb, but the seeing made it difficult to get a good image.  Also, had a nice long 3 hour broadcast on NSN.

New wireless focuser in use

Finally got my wireless remot system running for as far as the focusing goes.  Now to get the mount control working before winter.

 

The parts I used are:

12v Power Supply Inocircuit 5A 12V 

12v Led pwm controller LedWholesalers pwm controller 

12v Wireless remote kit Chinese Shipped remote kit 

2 - 12v Relays DPDT 12v relay  

If your handy with electronics, its not hard to wire up the kit, and it works from 400ft and will control any 9-12v stepper motor or servo motor.  You'll need two 12v DPDT relays wired in this configuration to make a forward/reverse configuration.  Rov forward/reverse wiring with two relays

If your interested in building one and have further questions, shoot me an email at shafner@bektel.com

Fought the wind and tranparency

Started out as a very foggy morning so I knew the transparency wasn't going to be so great, but I had the clearest sky I've seen in a long time.  Capturing 10,000 frames really helps to find enough good frames to stack.  Just couldn't get rid of the gradients in the first image.

New Focuser New Mount

Finally got the new focuser for the 80mm, and instantly modified it with some teflon mouse tape to shim and remove the focuser slop, it now turns as smooth as butter like a $150 dollar focuser.  Cloudy and windy, but the new mount is much more solid with the little scope so didn't have much for shaking issues.

Two attempts at AR2135

Rigged up the solar filter from the 80mm to work on the 114mm, and took a few videos.  Kinda crummy conditions today with the wind pushing the scope around and thin clouds passing by.  The first capture came out really noisy, but the second one at a faster framerate came out a little better.

Dual monitors

I finally got out to test my new Ioptron Cube Pro mount.  It definately tracks better than the old smartstar mount with just a lunar alignment and sync to target.  Had to dust off the old astromaster 114 for the night, and did a daytime artificial star collimation to get the optics lined up again.  And, of course I had to broadcast on NSN for an hour or so, just because its been so long since I had the chance. 

 

After Work Solar Session

Actually had some pretty clear skies after work, so I set up to where I could get a low horizon.  Transparency wasn't the greatest but the stacked images came out pretty good.  Especially the region of interest crop taken at 180fps for 5000 frames, should have gone for 10,000 or more to stack a higher percentage.  I was able to use some very high level wavelett sharpening in Registax and still had very little noise.

Cooking and Imaging

It was rather difficult to not go and sneak some roast beef out of the smoker while I was out imaging and broadcasting on NSN.  I was pretty hungry by the time I was done.  Still plenty of activity on the sun, we're not too far past the peak of activity.

Time to clean out some dust bunnies again.

Besides the two giant dust bunnies, one of which stacked out of the images quite well, I got a much better image than I have in a very long time.  Finally starting to feel like spring here in ND.  Had the pleasure of introducing a new viewer from Bulgaria on NSN today, hope he enjoys the site as much as the thousands of others that have signed up for the site making it the most awesome way to share our love of astronomy with the world, gotta give some great big thanks to Jim, the creator and operator of the worlds greatest live astronomy website.  Astronomy is a great hobby, but so much more fun when you can share it with other interested people, which are hard to find where I live......

Cloudy broadcast

Cloudy today so no stacked image, just a screengrab from my broadcast on nsn, through thin clouds of course.  I just had to be outside and enjoy the 60 degree weather.

Poor seeing and transparency

Not great seeing conditions, and poor transparency as there we sundogs again today, but I did my best getting a capture with the old computer as the new one is on it's way in for repairs already after only 30 days.

Crummy conditions, but first time in awhile

About the time I got all setup and everything working together, the thin clouds rolled in.  Took a capture in 4x4 binning mode s.o much lower resolution, but higher framerates to deal with the wind shaking the scope.  I actually got some broadcast time in on NSN, including a live processing tutorial of the capture I got just before the broadcast when the sky was the clearest.  I plan to do live processing at least every other weekend this summer so hopefully more people can  learn just how simple it can be......   This isn't the greatest image I've done, it was a quick and dirty process job and hard to see what was going on with the sun glare even behind my shade box, but it's not as bad as I was expecting.

Had to add the picture I took of the new improved setup with dual monitors and the remote focuser on the telescope with long enough cables to move the scope up to 20 feet away from the table so sometimes I can be in the shade doing solar.

A little bit warmer

Finally, its starting to warm up a bit, got out to test some new equipment.  New Asus laptop, remote focuser and some custom built longer cables so I don't have to be right beside the scope.  Seeing wasn't that great, but shot enough frames at high framerate to stack out decent images.  Hopefully try again tomorrow

More Horrible Seeing

Horrible seeing once again, but did what I could.  Recorded 10,000 frames and let PIPP sort it down to the best 2000, then stacked in Autostakkert2 using the best 5%.  Here's the progression in the processing of the images, first is final stack, then waveletts in Registax, then the final after levels in GIMP and cropping.

Finally after over two months now.....

Finally got a clear sky day for solar on a weekend when it wasn't deadly cold and cloudy.  Poor seeing and barely above the treetops, but I did what I could to get the massive active region 11944.

Can tell I haven't used the scope in awhile, the dust bunnies grew into full sized rabbits.... lol