Solar

Sunspots - Eclipses - Prominances

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The Sun in H-Alpha Light - June 19, 2004

The sun showed an amazing amount of activity on this particular Saturday, which is especially surprising since the Sun is near its minimum activity cycle. This is the first image I've taken through an H-Alpha filter, which highlights the particular, narrow wavelength of hydrogen in which the Sun shows the most detail.

Location: Copperbreaks State Park near Quanah, Texas
Date/Time: June 19, 2004 @ 7:45 PM
Equipment: Televue TV-102 on Losmandy GM-8 mount
Camera: Modified Canon Digital Rebel (IR filter removed)
Filter: Coronado 90mm AS1 H-Alpha filter
Exposure Information: Single 1/250 image
Processing Information: All processing in Photoshop CS. Split channels. Used green channel for surface details and red for prominence detail. Masking of image disk over prominence image by selection, feathering, copy/paste, and alignment. Levels and gamma stretch. Flatten image and RGB conversion. Levels for artifical color addition.

Note: Some equipment provided by Three Rivers Foundation.

Sunspots on April 29, 2003

A pretty group of sunspots (# 0349) that appears like a flower to me.

Location: Texas Star Party 2003 near Fort Davis, Texas
Date and Time: April 29, 2003 @ 3:15 PM CST
Equipment: LX200 @ f/10 and Orion full aperture glass solar filter
Length: 1/1000 sec.
Film: Kodak Royal Gold 400
Processing Information: Slightly cropped with a levels/color adjustment and contrast increase. Slight unsharp mask applied.

Exposure Notes: I just purchased the Orion filter so I felt like I needed to put it to use. To my pleasure I got to see this rather nice sunspot group.