Impressive Solar Flare

 09:30, Friday April 24, Freshwater, Isle of Wight.

This magnificent flare was the first thing I saw after setting up for a day of solar imaging. On the left the Sun in white light, on the right the sun in Ha.

The white light image was taken with a Sky Watcher ED80 DS Pro, Baader solar film, QHY268C camera and SharpCap. The Ha image was taken using a Coronado PST, Altair GP-CAM3 178M camera and AltairCapture, it comprises two images, the first (centre) a normal exposure showing surface detail, the second (behind) overexposed to reveal prominences and flares. The flare appears to have originated from AR4419 which was extremely bright in Ha.

The images were stacked from 60 second videos, using RegiStax6 and processed with ImPPG and Affinity Photo 2.

 

New M51

After nearly two years of zero deep sky astrophotography I finally got round to doing a full recalibration of the rig. I chose M51 as my test target.

The image is made up from four 3 hour sessions, 17th, 18th, 19th March and 6th April, 90 x 120s exposures each night. It's looking good so far.

Scope:        Sky-Watcher ED80 DS Pro

Camera:      QHY268C

Mount:        Sky-Watcher NE6 Pro

Images stacked using Deep Sky Stacker and processed using Affinity Photo 2.