Saturday 21st Sept. Solar: Proms.

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Saturday: Clear start with a high moon. Then it clouded over!

Bright and clear later so it was back to the observatory for some prom imaging. High frequency thermal agitation teased with only brief clarity all day. Still experimenting with camera tilting and image processing.

Tilting the camera pushes the glare off to the side and hopefully right out of the frame. The tilt plate I have has truly awful ergonomics. I ordered a ZWO but received a clone. One where the thumbscrews are far too short and far too close together to allow any useful adjustment. I don't have any suitable 3mm screws long enough for the pull screws. So I used the pull thumbnails for pushing instead. With very long screws for pulling fitted with doubled and locked nuts.

Today's images speak for themselves as mere daubs. There is no subtlety to the clouds-like proms.

I am trying another technique in Registax following expert advice. Usually I use the coarse, wavelet controls in reverse but now I am trying the earlier
sliders instead. Not with great success I might add.

There are two groups of proms on opposite limbs. Both are changing literally before my eyes on the monitor.

I'd like to step between consecutive images to produce an animation of the changes. This means I have to maintain the same image orientation over time and not to swap Barlows in and out. I'd have to use exactly the same settings in Registax to avoid a change in appearance between animation frames.

I fiddle about with the camera and SharpCap settings so often that I would have to set aside a whole, clear day to capture suitable videos at intervals.

There is doubt being expressed over my Limiting myself to so few "Best frames" from my raw videos. I shall have to redo one of my videos in Registax using stepped % of total frames. Earlier on I was advised to heavily reduce the number of "good" frames. Hence my drastic reduction to 5% and even 2% in poor seeing conditions. I really should watch another video on using SharpCap. I just don't have the patience to watch an old one for another 20 minutes.

Click on any image for an enlargement.

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