CaK Full Disk 22nd January 2021

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marktownley
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CaK Full Disk 22nd January 2021

Post by marktownley »

Friday was forecast to be sunny so I arranged to work at home. Getting up way before dawn I scheduled all my emails and work to go out at a more reasonable hour with the aim of wrapping up by lunch ready for some solar. The morning was glorious, deep blue skies and I was happy, then from nowhere instability kicked in the atmosphere, and clouds explosively developed over the Welsh mountains to the west of me. Downing tools I raced outside to setup, choosing CaK as I could just throw on the filter and image. In about 15 minutes my sky was quite rapidly turning to milk. I grabbed a CaK full disk but that was it. After taking this image the cloud was just too thick to image in Ha.

ImageCaK-FD-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

ImageCaK-FD-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

I was pleasantly surprised to see the sun quite a bit higher in the sky than a month ago. As such was able to use the 60mm setup at f16 to get this disk and was happy how it turned out given the milk was looking through.

With the haze and steadily decreasing transparency the 'auto gain' feature in FireCapture came to the rescue. This allows you to set the maximum % value you want the histogram to be set to. Easy to do, set the exposure time as you would normally, then shorten the exposure and increase the gain slider to get back to where you were on the histogram. Enable auto gain and FC (magically!) adjusts the gain value so that the value on the histogram stays constant. In my case with falling transparency the gain was increased as the file was captured to ensure each individual frame was the same overall brightness level. A neat trick!

Well, tomorrow is supposed to be sunny, we will see!

Mark


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Re: CaK Full Disk 22nd January 2021

Post by rsfoto »

Hi Mark,

Excellent discs. There is something coming on the Northeast limb at about 10 o'clock


regards Rainer

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Re: CaK Full Disk 22nd January 2021

Post by marktownley »

Thanks Rainer, yes in the next couple of hours we should see if there are any spots!


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Re: CaK Full Disk 22nd January 2021

Post by DeepSolar64 »

I barely got a white light observation through the milky mirk today. Mark, that's a very nice CaK image considering you were looking through milky skies too!


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Re: CaK Full Disk 22nd January 2021

Post by John »

Super image despite milky sky, even at full resolution .Great tip about using auto gain feature in FC.

John


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Re: CaK Full Disk 22nd January 2021

Post by ffellah »

Great images, mark. Thanks for the FC tip.

Franco


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Re: CaK Full Disk 22nd January 2021

Post by EGRAY_OBSERVATORY »

Thanks Mark and the image has come-out really well considering the short time you had.

Yes, Cak is often so much quicker to get a decent image than Ha, so you succeeded-well.

Cheers
Terry


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Re: CaK Full Disk 22nd January 2021

Post by Stardust5858 »

Brilliant thanks for sharing, sun was out this morning here but tree's in the way for me until the afternoon, by the afternoon it was cloud ☁️. Go figure, supposed to be clear here Saturday in the afternoon so hopefully get something. Thanks again.


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Re: CaK Full Disk 22nd January 2021

Post by eroel »

Mark:
Beautiful CaK FD´s.
Best of weekend.
Eric.


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Re: CaK Full Disk 22nd January 2021

Post by DeepSolar64 »

Mark,
You picked up what appears to be a new AR in the NW. I didn’t notice it earlier today in white light but clouds may have interfered with me seeing it.

James


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Re: CaK Full Disk 22nd January 2021

Post by marios i. »

Beautiful images Mark, Thank you


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Re: CaK Full Disk 22nd January 2021

Post by Carbon60 »

Beautiful FDs, Mark. No Sun for me. It came tantalising close with beautiful blue sky to the north and west for a while, but a stubborn stream of clouds remained right where I didn’t need them. These finally spread and produced heavy showers. So frustrating!

Stu.


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Re: CaK Full Disk 22nd January 2021

Post by marktownley »

Thanks everyone, woke up to snow and ice again this morning, optimistic I may (?) get a chance to image later on. I've just taken delivery of a new telecentric so the odds are stacked against me :lol:


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Re: CaK Full Disk 22nd January 2021

Post by Montana »

That is one killer CaK Mark :bow :hamster: I see you picked up the plage of the new NE region as well as the beautiful new AR in the NW. Remember, solar first, work later!
Nothing but snow here today.

Alexandra


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