Huge sunspots AR2371

[Carole]

The first image I have done from home since February, and the first solar image I have done for a couple of years.
Sold my PST as I wasn't using it to help fund my Atik460, so I am back to white light.

We did an outreach event at a school yesterday and between the clouds we saw these stonking great sunspots, so it gave me the urge to try to capture them when I got home.  Presume these have been responsible for the recent CME and aurora.

HEQ5 and ED120 - Baader filter
This was using Mick's imaging source DBK that I bought, so image in honour of Mick.

75% of 1500 frames 30 fps. 



Carole

[Kenny]

Wow, fantastic detail! Nice close up.

[Carole]

Thanks Kenny.

Carole

[Fay]

Great picture Carole!

[Carole]

Thanks Fay.  Don't often have the urge to image the Sun but when I saw how huge they were I just had to have a go at them.

Carole

[The Thing]

Really nice Carole. Some fine detail. What did you use to process the AVI?

[Carole]

Thanks Duncan,

I used Registax and a light use of wavelets, then into Photoshop.
I also did some AVIs with my DMK for comparison, but there was no better definition, and there were absolutely loads of dust bunnies on the screen.  Since I was using the same scope and same telescope adapter and IR filter as I used with the DBK it must be dust on the sensor as I didn't have the same problem with the DBK camera.  So as the sensitivity didn't seem any better I didn't bother to process the DMK AVIs. 

I also did flats with the DMK in an attempt to remove said dust, but Registax would not recognise the Flats AVI's, do I have to convert the image type and perhaps load it as a Jpeg or something?  Never done flats with an AVI before - how did you guess lol?

Carole

[MarkS]

Very nice indeed!  Were they the sunspots that caused the Aurora?

BTW, the Aurora was actually photographed from Ashford (in the local paper) so I'm extra annoyed that all I saw was cloud   

[Carole]

Thanks, yes they were Mark.  How annoying about the aurora.

Carole

[Rick]

A matter of being lucky with gaps in the cloud, I guess. That active sunspot group has produced quite a bit of activity, both CMEs and flares:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/earth-directed-cme-lights-the-skies
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/sun-unleashes-mid-level-flare
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/sdo-sees-mid-level-solar-flare
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/potw/item/637