Sun in HAlpha / CaK With Lunt LS100THa / Explore Scientific AR152 + Lunt CaK filter B600 Uploaded 12/31/13 Daily Report For Tuesday, December 31st, 2013
Images below are 1290 wide and non clickable
Rarely does a bright flare, large arboreal prominence, and a arcade style eruptive prom appear on the sun all at the same time. This last day of the year was such a day, and this morning at 8am the sky was clear, transparent and seeing was moderately good. All images processed in Autostakkert 2.0.7 and post processed in Photoshop CS3.
H-Alpha images:
Full disk here first, with the Lunt LS100 and an Antares .5x focal reducer to fit the full disk onto the DMK51 camera sensor.
Next, the prominences along the limb. The exposure must be much longer to capture these and the disk is then burned out pure white, so I've blacked it out here as to not be a distraction. Note the gorgeous Arboreal (tree shaped) prom on the left bottom, and the stunning Arcade style prom (slinky hoops) from a solar eruption which happened earlier in the day:
trying to expose a solar image so the disk is not burned out and keep the proms is problematical and a processing challenge for an 8 bit camera, but here is an attempt from a single frame:
Next we put in the 3x Klee Barlow, this is a shortie style Barlow made back in the 80s with a very good functionality in the red wavelengths. Here is todays flaring sunspot:
And a few other interesting regions around the disk:
And NOW the prom close ups! the awesome Arcade hoops can be seen here in this 3x close up:
The huge Tree shaped prom which lifted off the sun rather suddenly around 6pm this evening is seen here:
And a few more regions around the limb with proms:
And now for some Calcium images. This is a wavelength that is at 393 nm, or near ultra violet and is invisible to most eyes, but the camera records it well. The coloration here represents this UV light.
All images are with the AR152 stopped to 4 inches to yield f/10. Then a 1.5x Proxima telenegative amplifier is inserted before the filter module to yield f/15 into the filter. Here is a pan across the disk of the sun, with a few active regions highlighted:
Here is the Arcade Prom in Calcium K. The contrast on proms is much, much lower than in Halpha because the bandwidth is a very wide 2.4nm and internal reflections and brightness gradients are all but impossible to keep out of the images. I did what I could here, the good news is the hoops are very bright in calcium light!
This is the Arboreal prom, quite dim in Calcium!
Finally, here is a comparison of the arcade hoops in deep red Halpha light vs invisible violet light of Cak:
Thanks for looking, it has been quite a nice year for solar, deep sky and cometary imaging. Looking forward to 2014!
