Sun FD in H-Alpha 25th of September 2021 – time-lapse and deflicker

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arnedanielsen
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Sun FD in H-Alpha 25th of September 2021 – time-lapse and deflicker

Post by arnedanielsen »

Dear friends,

As mentioned in an earlier post the weather forecast for the 25 was very good. Sunny all day without any clouds. My plan was therefore to make a long FD time-lapse in H-Alpha after I had done the usual FD H-Alpha and CaK images.

My laptop has only got about 250GB of free diskspace, which is a severe limitation when it comes to doing long time-lapse sequences. Thus, I decided to try to record directly to an external 5TB USB3.2 Gen 1 disk. Recording to an external disk like this is much slower than recording to the internal SSD-disk and trying to read fast from the camera at the same time as trying to store the data to an external disk could also cause speed issues. Thus, the night before I did some indoor testing and found that I could run 20 second recordings with the ASI ZWO 178mm camera @20fps back-to-back without any problems.

To avoid the field-rotation I put the scope on an Equatorial mount this time. I started the recording, but after a while some thin cirrus and small clouds appeared. Not what I wanted. I kept recording, but after about 2 hours I was clouded out for a longer period, and I decided to stop the recording. After another 45minutes the sky conditions improved and I started the recordings again, but like the first recording there where some small patches of clouds interfering every now and then. I was able to keep the second recording session going for just under 3 hours before that had to be cancelled also.

During the day I was able to record 944 x 20 seconds recordings for a total of 1,42TB of data, but instead of one long 5-6 hour continuously session I ended up with two separate sessions – one just over to hours and one just under 3 hours.

I knew that the clouds and the ever-changing conditions would create some challenges when processing the data, but I used at tool called GBDeflicker to try to even out the brightness changes (flicker) between the frames. This worked very well I think for the first session. For the second session it also reduced the flickering, but not as much as for the first.

Here’s the graph from the program illustrating the luminance variations between the frames (yellow) and how it will smooth it out (green).
GBDeflicker.PNG
GBDeflicker.PNG (12.16 KiB) Viewed 442 times

And here’s a heavily downscaled comparison between the original and the deflickered version of the time-lapse.
Sun60FD_082912_Ha_20210925_ZWO ASI178MM(53096324)_lapl4_ap2723_out_aligned_pipp.gif
Sun60FD_082912_Ha_20210925_ZWO ASI178MM(53096324)_lapl4_ap2723_out_aligned_pipp.gif (3.15 MiB) Viewed 442 times
Sun in FD H-Alpha 25th of September 2021 - timelapse (not deflickered)
Sun60FD_082912_Ha_20210925_ZWO ASI178MM(53096324)_lapl4_ap2723_out_aligned_pipp.gif
Sun60FD_082912_Ha_20210925_ZWO ASI178MM(53096324)_lapl4_ap2723_out_aligned_pipp.gif (1.87 MiB) Viewed 442 times
Sun in FD H-Alpha 25th of September 2021 - time-lapse

Click on the links to see the larger versions of these comparisons on AstroBin

The final results:

Time-lapse animation from 403 recordings each consisting of 400 frames (20 seconds at forced framerate of 20fps). The best 200 from each recording was then stacked in AutoStakkert!3, aligned, sharpened, normalized and contrast-stretched in ImPPG before deflickered in GBDeflicker. The final processing step was downsizing to 50% and creating the resulting animation in PIPP at 15 fps effectively compressing the 2h 14m down to 26 seconds.
Image

Image

Time-lapse animation from 512recordings each consisting of 400 frames (20 seconds at forced framerate of 20fps). The best 200 from each recording was then stacked in AutoStakkert!3, aligned, sharpened, normalized and contrast-stretched in ImPPG before deflickered in GBDeflicker. The final processing step was downsizing to 50% and creating the resulting animation in PIPP at 15 fps effectively compressing the 2h 50m down to 34 seconds.
Image

Image

The time-lapse was recorded using a Coronado 60mm/BF15 w/Beloptik ITF, stopped down to 50mm, Baader 35nm H-Alpha and ASI 178mm mounted on a SkyWatcher AZ EQ6 Pro in equatorial mode.


Thanks for looking and best regards,
Arne


Best regards,
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Re: Sun FD in H-Alpha 25th of September 2021 – time-lapse and deflicker

Post by Radon86 »

Superb imaging, thanks for sharing Arne.
I too, am looking to do animations, but only after I have improved my capturing, processing and other numerous skills.
However, with the sun getting lower each day, it gets harder to image.
Maybe have to leave more solar imaging until April and May next year ?

Thanks.
Magnus


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Re: Sun FD in H-Alpha 25th of September 2021 – time-lapse and deflicker

Post by arnedanielsen »

Thank you very much, Magnus!

The Sun is starting to get quite low in the sky, even at noon, and the available hours to solar imaging is shrinking rapidly.

Best regard,
Arne


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Re: Sun FD in H-Alpha 25th of September 2021 – time-lapse and deflicker

Post by DeepSolar64 »

Arne,
These are really nice. The animations look excellent. They remind me of some of the helioseismology images I have seen.

You are in Norway so I know the sun can't be very high. I feel for you. I would love to visit Norway and Sweden. Beautiful countries they are!

James


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Re: Sun FD in H-Alpha 25th of September 2021 – time-lapse and deflicker

Post by ffellah »

Fabulous work, Arne ! You are very talented at doing this.

Franco :bow


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Re: Sun FD in H-Alpha 25th of September 2021 – time-lapse and deflicker

Post by arnedanielsen »

Thank you very much for your kind comments James and Franco! Much appreciated!

James: I'm at 60 degrees North, the days are rapidly getting shorter and the max solar altitude at Noon is currently 27 degrees.

Best regards,
Arne


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Re: Sun FD in H-Alpha 25th of September 2021 – time-lapse and deflicker

Post by Montana »

Wow! the deflicker has worked a treat, I must try this out :bow :hamster:

Alexandra


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Re: Sun FD in H-Alpha 25th of September 2021 – time-lapse and deflicker

Post by DeepSolar64 »

arnedanielsen wrote: Thu Sep 30, 2021 1:07 pm Thank you very much for your kind comments James and Franco! Much appreciated!

James: I'm at 60 degrees North, the days are rapidly getting shorter and the max solar altitude at Noon is currently 27 degrees.

Best regards,
Arne


And to think that I dread the lower sun of winter and my latitude is 35 degrees north. I feel for you...

James


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Re: Sun FD in H-Alpha 25th of September 2021 – time-lapse and deflicker

Post by marktownley »

Very nice Arne, that de-flicker works really well...


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Re: Sun FD in H-Alpha 25th of September 2021 – time-lapse and deflicker

Post by arnedanielsen »

Thank you very much, Alexandra, James and Mark!

Alexandra: You can download and try a free fully functional version (with watermarking) from:
https://granitebaysoftware.com/Products/ProductGBD.aspx
I'm using the standalone windows application.

James: Thanks James. Just think of me the next time you dread over the low winter Sun at your latitude and it will make you feel better. :-)

Best regards,
Arne


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Re: Sun FD in H-Alpha 25th of September 2021 – time-lapse and deflicker

Post by marios i. »

Wonderful work!


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Re: Sun FD in H-Alpha 25th of September 2021 – time-lapse and deflicker

Post by arnedanielsen »

Thank you very much Marios!

Arne


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Re: Sun FD in H-Alpha 25th of September 2021 – time-lapse and deflicker

Post by Carbon60 »

These are really excellent results, Arne. It’s so interesting to watch the delicate movements across the disk.

GBDeflicker looks like it does a great job. I’ll check it out.

Stu.


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Re: Sun FD in H-Alpha 25th of September 2021 – time-lapse and deflicker

Post by arnedanielsen »

Thanks Stu!

Best regards,
Arne


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Re: Sun FD in H-Alpha 25th of September 2021 – time-lapse and deflicker

Post by MapleRidge »

A great session Arne...well done :bow

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Re: Sun FD in H-Alpha 25th of September 2021 – time-lapse and deflicker

Post by arnedanielsen »

Thank you very much Brian.

Best regards,
Arne


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