5/10/2015. Good air from tropical storm Ana works wonders in the deep sky and in the morning when the Sun slips between the pines.

9 panels assembled by PhotoMerge in Photoshop CS6.
Best 75 from 500 frames each panel.
Normalized in PixInsight, assembled, sharpened, and colorized in Photoshop.
Click the image for a better look. Really.

 

I think the color actually works against fine detail in this case. But it'll have to do for today. Good stuff yesterday, too. Note that I cleaned the acrylic component in the B600 blocking diagonal with Polywatch to remove the nasty-looking mineral deposits. And I swiped the accessible side of the blocking filter while I was in there with Baader cleaning spritz. Helped. But it's the air doing most of this.

 

 

 

Except where noted, solar photos are made with a ZWO Optical ASI120MM camera (ca. June 2013) behind a Lunt Solar Systems 60mm THa with its objective replaced by an Orion 90mm F10 achromat. The telescope uses a B600 blocking filter and is mounted piggyback with an Astro-Tech 10-inch Ritchey-Chretien (carefully capped!) on an Astro-Physics Mach1GTO mount. A Dell Latitude notebook running FireCapture provides camera control and capture services via USB 2.0. Images typically begin as 400 - 1200 frame AVI's captured at about 27 fps. Clips are aligned and stacked using AVIStack 2.0. The resulting files are processed via wavelet functions in Registax and / or the FocusMagic 3.0.2 deconvolution plug-in in Photoshop CS4. Alternatively, PixInsight picks up the processing somewhere in the workflow after AVIStack processing. The imaging train usually includes an Orion "Shorty" 2x barlow screwed into the ASI120MM body. A RoboFocus motor with a timing belt looped around the stock (or, sometimes, a Feathertouch) focus knob enables remote operation.

 

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