Calcium Sunday 2nd August

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marktownley
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Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by marktownley »

I was nearly caught out by our lovely weather today. Whilst enjoying a lie in following maybe one drink too many last night, my good lady wife woke me saying I better not stay in bed all day as it was clear blue skies. This was not what the weather forecast had suggested the day before so stumbling and bumbling I got dressed and headed outside. Sure enough, the sky was deep blue without a cloud in the sky, but this is a regular vagary of the weather round here, and I knew that oh too soon the instability due to the warmth of the morning would kick in and clouds would bubble up.

I knew from my observations of AR12768 in CaK with the 118mm scope that I felt this objective was marred with spherical aberration, so I decided to get my trusty 100mm Tal refractor on the case and see what I got to compare. Running at f27 at the filter, and straight away the difference between the 2 scopes was huge, the Tal is sharp with oodles of fine detail, the 118mm Meade is just soft, it's like there isn't a focus spot rather a focus zone, and despite the larger image scale of the Meade there was more resolution of finer detail with the Tal.

I'll start off with the full disk for the overview, but this was the image taken last, probably a couple of hours after the close shots due to the cloud. Taken with the Tal stopped down to 60mm this gives ~f16 at the chip, and it's 1000mm focal length nicely fills the chip without having to use any barlows etc to boost image scale (without robbing light and introducing SA) - less is more in CaK!

ImageCaK-FD-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

ImageCaK-FD-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

I was talking about the 'weather' before, and when imaging these closeup images I really did only have enough time to capture 5 runs on each target before the weather collapsed. On the very last run the seeing just collapsed; going from a crystal clear static view on the laptop screen to one that lost all fine detail and resolution. I don't have hard data, just good ol' gut feeling and experience, but in a minute it went from 1" seeing to 2" seeing, which, means half the detail goes - hence the full disk later... I looked up from the laptop when the seeing change occurred, and, sure enough very small scudding cumulus clouds were beginning to form. 15 minutes later the sky was completely overcast! Anyway, enough wiffle, here are the close ups, be sure to view all images full size in Flickr as they're shown greatly reduced in size here...

Imagear12767-CaK-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Imagear12767-CaK-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Imagear12768-CaK-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Imagear12768-CaK-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Pleased with these, if only the seeing and clear skies had stayed around I would have done some Ha too. Still, can't have everything, it's afternoon now and hot so I reckon the seeing is probably 3-4", so, i'm not even bothering getting the scopes out. I hope tomorrow and the coming week bring me some more clear skies!

Mark


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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by rsfoto »

Hi Mark,

Excellent images. Perhaps today I get some Sun again after more then 8 ? days with no Sun ... I already forgot how to use my equipment :mrgreen:


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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by marktownley »

Thanks Rainer, you always seem to have sun, 8 days without sun must seem an age!


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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by eroel »

Mark:
Beautiful clean crisp images.
Here is clouded, hope the Sun shows a bit.
Good day,
Eric.


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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by krakatoa1883 »

Cristal clear images, Mark, with superb definition. Long focus achromats have very low spherochromatism and are perfect for CaK. More difficult is to find suitable seeing conditions for those wavelength, however the weather is quite variable in the UK so you can have more chances than here, where bad conditions can last for weeks and not necessarily end with better ones.


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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by JochenM »

Looking good, Mark.

We've got a potential heatwave coming in here, starting at the end of the coming week. It it's somewhat similar in the UK, there'll be plenty of sun at least (seeing will be a different story though).


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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by grimble_cornet »

Nice to see someone else still using the Tal for CaK- several people have told me its cheap Russian junk. Good job we know better!
What camera are you using now........... you have obviously increased/exchanged the imaging hardware collection since we last met.


.

.



.


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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by EGRAY_OBSERVATORY »

Hi Mark, some excellent images of today's events and hopefully my observatory will be fully operational again after much improvement-work to the PC gear, screens and cabling...

Thanks
Terry


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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by dhkaiser »

Very good Mark. I may have said this in the past, I prefer the mono. Keep it up.


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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by MapleRidge »

HI Mark...

These are a superb set of CaK images :bow

Brian


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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by DeepSolar64 »

The plage to AR12768 is huge in CaK!!


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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by AJamesB »

Lovely detail as always!


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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by marktownley »

Thanks everyone for the kind words, going to get out observing in the next hour or so when the sun is high enough in the sky.
krakatoa1883 wrote: Sun Aug 02, 2020 4:22 pm Cristal clear images, Mark, with superb definition. Long focus achromats have very low spherochromatism and are perfect for CaK. More difficult is to find suitable seeing conditions for those wavelength, however the weather is quite variable in the UK so you can have more chances than here, where bad conditions can last for weeks and not necessarily end with better ones.
Hi Raf, have you had any experience with the Technosky 152/8 fpl-51 triplet? there's one here in the UK going at a good price...
grimble_cornet wrote: Sun Aug 02, 2020 7:37 pm Nice to see someone else still using the Tal for CaK- several people have told me its cheap Russian junk. Good job we know better!
What camera are you using now........... you have obviously increased/exchanged the imaging hardware collection since we last met.
Mike, the Tal is an excellent refractor, based on a Zeiss design I believe. I wish they made a 150mm f10 version too! I'm using a FLIR (PGR) IMX174 chipped grasshopper for the closeups, and also another grasshopper, the ICX814 chipped version for the full disks.


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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by Carbon60 »

grimble_cornet wrote: Sun Aug 02, 2020 7:37 pm Nice to see someone else still using the Tal for CaK- several people have told me its cheap Russian junk. Good job we know better!
What camera are you using now........... you have obviously increased/exchanged the imaging hardware collection since we last met.
Good to see you back, Mike.

Stu.


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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by Carbon60 »

An excellent set of images, Mark. Beautifully crisp. You got lucky with that window of blue and excellent seeing ;)

Stu.


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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by krakatoa1883 »

marktownley wrote: Mon Aug 03, 2020 5:31 amHi Raf, have you had any experience with the Technosky 152/8 fpl-51 triplet? there's one here in the UK going at a good price...
yes but not for solar, I looked into the scope of a friend of mine, cant' tell nothing about H-alpha or calcium. However I wouldn't consider it unless you can look at the longitudinal aberration diagram to evaluate spherochromatism at short WL. Why don't consider the 125 mm f/7.8 FPL-53 instead ? based on Stuart's images it should be excellent for CaK.


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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by EGRAY_OBSERVATORY »

Mark, some more early-rising I suspect for you, as at the moment the forecast is for much clear-skies till next weekend and AR276(9) is on the N.E. fringes,so hopefully more action...

Cheers
Terry


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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by EGRAY_OBSERVATORY »

Correction to my last Mark - which should have read AR2(770) for the newbie...

Terry


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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by marktownley »

krakatoa1883 wrote: Mon Aug 03, 2020 8:09 am
marktownley wrote: Mon Aug 03, 2020 5:31 amHi Raf, have you had any experience with the Technosky 152/8 fpl-51 triplet? there's one here in the UK going at a good price...
yes but not for solar, I looked into the scope of a friend of mine, cant' tell nothing about H-alpha or calcium. However I wouldn't consider it unless you can look at the longitudinal aberration diagram to evaluate spherochromatism at short WL. Why don't consider the 125 mm f/7.8 FPL-53 instead ? based on Stuart's images it should be excellent for CaK.
Hi Raf, I had thought about the 125/f7.8, however my reason with a 152/f8 is that it forms a gap plugger with what I have already. I'm good at 100mm and below, and, have the 200mm HaT. With a 152/8 I can stop down to give me 120mm f10 for CaK, which, realistically I think is my aperture limit at this wavelength, and, also use it at 152/8 with the Quark as the middle ground when seeing won't let me use the HaT.

I would love to have an APM triplet 152 but somehow I think the bank manager has other ideas about that. I definitely wouldn't get anything without seeing some spot / aberration diagrams - if you do come across one for the tecnosky let me know. Another option i'm thinking about is the new Skywatcher Ed150...

Priority has to be performance at 393 and 656nm, however I would like something lacking chromatic aberrations for the brief times I do a bit of moon or planet gazing. I'm not bothered about deep sky, too much light pollution!


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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by krakatoa1883 »

I understand, Mark. The owner of Tecnosky is a good friend of mine, I'll ask him if can provide further details on that scope.


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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by Montana »

The close ups are a delight to view Mark :bow :hamster: what a difference 2 days make! Cheshire seems to be rain capital of the north, there always seems to a patch hovering over us at the moment. I am glad I took Friday off!

Alexandra


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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by Martin_S »

Hi Mark,excellent images . It's great when our wives embrace our interests, my wife has her own telescope for birdwatching, last week she asked if it was suitable for astronomy.

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Re: Calcium Sunday 2nd August

Post by marktownley »

Thanks folks! I think solar is appreciated because it makes me get up early in the morning which has the consequence that it means I don't stay up all night watching TV :D


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