4th May 2019 Solar New spot!

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Saturday 4th 36F Overnight frost followed by sunny periods. It just reached 50F by lunchtime and then started to hail big soft blobs! Wearing a big down jacket for warmth in the observatory.

Between heavy clouds I captured 4 x 1000 frame videos in white light using SharpCap RGB24 1920x960, ZWO 120 MM. 180mm F/12 2160 f/l, Lacerta 2" prism + green 1.25" Baader Solar Continuum. 'Skywatcher' DC focusing. I was seeing fine surface detail on the laptop screen but the images looked like crap in Registax.

Shutters were already closed as I was called in for lunch. That was before I could process anything worthwhile. The sun has now come out again after a leaden sky moved on. 14.00 Time to return to the fray. No. Cloud and more cloud.

Sunday 5th 36-54F. Large clumps of cumulus spoiling an otherwise sunny day. I have only managed a few videos from the ZWO120 without cloud racing across and turning the SharpCap screen black. Haven't even looked in H-a today while I have been busy with white light. Added a 2x WO Barlow to the camera nose for 4.32m focal length. Amazing surface detail in better moments. Not enough frames of such detail shown in the video in Registax. Time to get back after lunch in the hope of more blue sky.

Sky now milky white but much less cloud. Captured a better video with 2x WO Barlow. I am going to have to transfer my captured videos to my PC for the Registax treatment. My results on the 16.6" 4K laptop look completely different on my bigger 71cm monitor indoors.  I keep trying "imppg" but it won't accept my AVIs for some reason. Of course it won't. As has been kindly pointed out it is used in conjunction with Registax instead of the wavelets. [I think.]

Another odd thing is a "shower curtain" sort of "thick glaze" to the laptop screen in SharpCap. As if unwanted "sharpening" was already being applied during video capture. I find the final images in Registax are also sharpened even before I use wavelets. Perhaps there is a setting in SharpCap I have overlooked or have set accidentally? The stacked image is always awful in Registax regardless of how many % of best images I select for Limit.

Click on any image for an enlargement. 

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