H-Alpha First Attempt

I would like to share my first attempt at solar imaging using an h-alpha filtering. The pic is a close-up of the suns surface.

Stacked from 40 images using Registax 3.
Camera is a Celestron NexImage in black and white.
Color added using Photoshop.

Enjoy.

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thats pretty.

 

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Thanks Ellion, appreciate the comment. I need to make a Hartmann mask so I can better focus the details. And of course, much more practice.

 

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is it through a telescope?

 

it looks like the onset of psychadelic visions.

 

Yes, its through a telescope with an H-Alpha filter. The dark lines are filaments, which are thread like clouds of solar mass held up by the magnetic field of the sun usually up around 50,000 kilometers from the surface, while in the upper middle portion is a sunspot forming. The dark spot in the middle of that formation is about the size of the Earth.

 

Nice image you have there. That's hard to do too.

 

Thanks Cosmic - it is tough, but what makes it easy is a good mount, which I don't really have as yet. As well, my current mount is not properly polar aligned, which makes keeping the image centered somewhat more difficult.

The NexImage camera is set to take 5 images per second for 60 seconds for a total of 300 images. You then choose the best image available from those and Registax finds the best images on a percentage basis and then allows you to stack those images together, usually around 40 or so.

 

what is "solar mass"?

 

The mass of the sun... Everything is a comparison, and so to gauge the size of other stars, instead of saying its 1000000000000000000000000kg, we say its 1.4 solar masses... or 4 solar masses, or .5 solar masses Which means the mass of our sun times that number

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Hi (Q),
Why is the upper right corner brighter than the rest?

 

I guess its more active

 

Ellion

Tristan is correct in her explanation of solar mass. However, I was using the term inappropriately and meant that some of the mass of the sun was held up by the magnetic field.

Pete

That portion is brighter due to the adjustment of the sub angstrom h-alpha filtering system, a sort of a 'sweet spot' in which more details can be brought out. I mistakenly happened to get the 'terminator' of that area right near the middle of the image.

One of the difficulties of solar imaging is trying to get good focus and correct adjustments from a laptop screen as opposed to through an eyepiece.