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3/29/2011. The Sun is full of beautiful activity, but I caught only one active region, the vast AR1176 with its multiple sunspot cores and long, looping filaments. There were easily four other regions which could have been as rewarding to photograph today. I tried a composited all-disc image but lost my bearings; coming off a bad weekend including a trip to the ER for "stomach flu," I lacked the gumption to go back inside for the telecompressor, refocus, reset exposure, etc, etc. It does not seem like such a chore now, but then, there's no real prospect of having to do it now. The Antares 0.5x telecompressor now lives in the kit with the camera and the LXD-55 battery so I will not miss a chance like that again. I still need to work on the extension distance with that optic to get a full-sun, single-frame image. As it is, it still requires two, with only a minute bit of overflap. That adds greatly to the trouble of doing a full-disc image. Anyway, here's today's sharpest clip, distilled into one frame using AVIStack instead of Registax. Experimenting...
LS60THa50DS, Point Grey Chameleon
Sans barlow. 300 frames. The good news is that there are now areas of the lawn which are in pine-free sunlight for hours at a time, so if there are ever any more cloud-free days between now and the autumnal equinox, I should get more chances for imaging like this. I would like one soon so that I can redeem my chance for a photo of the full disk graced with the half-dozen dramatic AR's now at play on the Sun's face. We'll see.
4/01/2011. Broken clouds blowing through, with reasonably clear and reasonably steady skies in between gave me a chance to try for the full Sun. Since my previous notes, the Sun has rotated far enough that the beautiful symmetry of the northern and southern active regions is lessened. I put the Antares 0.5x compressor inside the 1.25-inch adapter and kept the C-mount ring in place as a minimal extension ring. The full solar disk does fit, which surprises me (what did I adjust and when?), but it is a near thing, putting a modest premium on polar alignment (in the future, for full-disk imaging, align the long side of the frame N/S to minimize that liability). Here's the best clip of the day, with disk and edge detail stretched seperately. Exposures were 1.2ms; less would suffice. Gain was set to only 11db. On a clear day, I may not be able to see forever, but I bet I could freeze seeing even better with something like 0.5ms and 18db... 
1.2 ms x 300 frames
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© 2011, David Cortner