Today was a good day for…Astronomy!
After spending a few hours with the great sunspot AR2529, I drove a few tens of miles to a different location from where I could catch another ISS transit, this time over the Moon.
But for now, since I still have to process all of the 160 Gb of data acquired, I shall post only an image depicting the very large sunspot 2529. This image is my best High Resolution image of the Sun’s surface until now.
The image was acquired using a 355mm F/5 homemade Newtonian with Baader Astrosolar filter, two Barlow lenses (a 2x TeleVue Powermate, and a Baader 2.25x), and the ASI 174MM camera with a Red filter. Seeing was very variable, but with excellent moments during brief 2-3 second periods.
First shot presents a colored view (via processing), with the size of Earth also shown for comparison:
And the greyscale version:
Still a lot more images to come, but it’s been a loooong day…
UPDATE (April 17):
Some new shots of the AR 2529 session from April 13.
First image is a comparison between two views acquired with the 200mm F/5 Newtonian (some time before the above-posted images were acquired) and the reprocessed image acquired with the 355mm Newtonian; this comparison shows well just how much more details are observable due to the larger size mirror of the 14 inch scope.
And two reprocessed images with the 14 inch scope; this time the processing was a bit more aggressive.
maximus photography 