A daytime adventure: the Sun, including AR3780 - 10/08/2024
Gradually processing last summer's data, I've arrived at a folder I intially dreaded processing.. "08-10-Sun"
I usually don't like processing planetary much.. the whole process often felt messy to me, especially as when I tried processing some of this data with AutoStakkert!3 and RegiStax6 a few months back, there have been some issues..
However, I was since then recommended another program called AstroSurface, which I personally find much nicer to use! (while Registax is quite old and not updated, I feel like AstroSurface vs AS!3/AS!4 is pretty much personal preference?)
Not only did the processing go very well, I actually really like the final result! Funny enough, the best stack came from a clip that initially didn't look that good seeing-wise!
I went thru all the clips I collected that day. Some of them I took with a 2x barlow lens, while others I've just imaged native (1200mm focal lenght), the native focal lenght clips seemed to come out way better and sharper, it might be due to camera settings, the dimmer image (due to slower F ratio with the barlow), or maybe the seeing simply got worse? Unfortunately I'm not experienced enough yet with planetary imaging to be able to tell :/
The full-disk image was captured with my Canon 1300D DSLR, unfortunately I overexposed the images slightly (iirc, due to the shutter creating a shadow gradient thing at faster exposures..), and there are some dust spots in the image.. but oh well
The close up was captured using the ZWO asi462mm, which you might notice is a mono camera
Both the close up and the DSLR images (as those came out super pale) were colorized in Paint.NET using the Curves tool. As far as I know, this is a pretty normal thing to do, it doesn't change the underlying data and makes the images look much nicer and cooler :) Contrast and brightness was also adjusted in PDN.
I aimed my telescope at the Sun by observing it's shadow on the ground, it being a round, long tube meant that the shadow should be the smallest when aimed towards the target! Using this + increasing the exposure on my DSLR to see some glow around in the direction our star was once I got close, I managed to get on target! I did also point my mount roughly north and turned it on, so that at least I don't have to recenter as often as I would untracked.
To be honest, every time I'm not using a freshly prepared bit of ND5 solar foil, I do get worried there might be a tiny hole somewhere that I don't notice and that I'm gonna fry my camera.. The Sun is dangerous! Please never look at the Sun without proper protection, especially thru a telescope!
The close up image was aligned, stacked, waveletted and sharpened in AstroSurface, then slightly denoised in PixInsight using DeepSNR v2
Here are the final pictures:
First the full disk:
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