First effort

[rbenton]

I am new t this. I bought a scope and a camera and yesterday was the first day without cluds eveythig went together. So this is my first Ha photo attempt. Compared to others I have seen here I thought it looked a little over sharpened. Dimensionally it looks less like a sphere and more like a coin. And I don't know why the exposure is uneven. I want to get better at this, so I invite any brutally frank comments. I have a thick hide, so I can handle harsh criticism.

Randall Benton

[papamidnight1]

Nice first image! Leaps and bounds beyond most initial efforts. Maybe a little over sharpened- probably nothing you can't tweak/refine in photoshop. Keep at it!

[grimble_cornet]

Hi Randall and welcome to this great group.
That is a pretty good first attempt at solar imaging; certainly better than my first image

You will get plenty of good advice here but............. it will be much easier if you provide us with information about the equipment you are using as this will help identify problems and possible solutions.
Scope, camera, capture software, stacking software, sharpening/tweaking/colouring software?

Look forward to seeing more of your work.

[rbenton]

Thank you for the advice! I used a Lunt LS100, PGR Grasshopper3 (6mp), Firecapture 500 frames @ 25fps, Registax using wavelet sharpening with all sliders at 10-15%, and Photoshop using Highlight/Shadow adj, and to combine the surface and proms images. I colored it by adding a layer to the final BW image and filled the layer with 100% Yellow/35% Magenta blending mode "Color Burn" I hope this helps.

Randall Benton

[Montana]

what a shot! and a very warm welcome

The over sharpened look that you are not happy with is because you used Registax wavelets, these are not very good for solar imaging. Can I recommend you download ImPPG http://greatattractor.github.io/imppg/

Load your image, set the iterations to 500 and use the slider to view what the final sharpening looks like in the little sample window on your image. When you are happy, click the square button at the top to 'do all'

Hydrogen alpha is flat, there is no limb shadow so your image will look like a coin, just like how your eye sees it through the eyepiece.

Do you have pressure tune or tilt tune etalon? if tilt tune, then you will always have a brighter patch somewhere. Try and tilt the etalon so that you see the darkest contrast for example on a filament. Then try and get the sun in a position on the camera chip where the bright patch isn't. For my PST I have to get the Sun in the bottom left corner for a most even field, it doesn't matter as I crop the image later.

If you have pressure tune, well the image shouldn't have a sweet spot, so perhaps maybe the etalon isn't quite properly on centre-line yet, try adding a bit more pressure or less pressure and see if you can get it more even and more contrast.

Saying that, I still think you have a cracking image
Alexandra

[Derek Klepp]

Well done Randall just keep at it and you will eventually get the result you want.With that set up I think you will surpase what you thought possible.

[Gordon Ewen]

Hello Randall, I would echo the thoughts of the other replies you've had so far. I have a Lunt pressure tuned solar scope and recognise the uneven illumination myself. For what its worth here are some thoughts.
I suspect you need to explore the tuning some more and then move the solar disc around on your pc screen; I find that there is an optimal position to get even illumination on the camera chip. I also wonder if you may have too high an exposure as the disc look like it could be saturated in places. Use the histogram to get to about 85% of the maximum and you should be ok.
When processing the image change the appearance using curves rather than levels as it keeps the detail better.
Good luck!
Gordon

[Gordon Ewen]

I forgot to add; be careful using the highlights and shadows. It can work but I generally find adjusting the image with curves is better. One thing worth having a look at is the 'clarity' tool in Lightroom (if you have it), it adjusts the contrast in the mid tones and sometimes it does an excellent job on the disc while maintaining the proms.
Gordon

[GreatAttractor]

Good result, Randall. As Gordon wrote, you may be able to get full disc uniformly "on-band" after some tuning/framing combination. If not, you can always do e.g. a 4-pane mosaic using the best-looking parts of your camera's field of view.

Load your image, set the iterations to 500

Ouch That will slow things down a bit; I suggest you start at 50-70 and go up from there if needed. (After applying the L-R deconvolution, even not too many iterations, the image is much better suited to plain unsharp masking; make sure you read the tutorials linked on the ImPPG website).