41 min animation of Surge & Floating Prom, 24 May 2024

[H-Alpha]

Hi all,

I hope you are all well, both the old that I knew and the new members of SolarChat.
It is been a long time that I did not post a solar observation. After a happy and productive period with my SS Lunt130MS I stopped doing solar because I was very disappointed by the DS. It could not be "fixed" despite the help of many good people here, since it was problematic. I will post a separate topic later.

The last three days I felt nostalgia and gave it a try, so I wanted to share with you the following 41 min animation. It is the very same surge and floating proms that Martin_S captured in a very beautiful way in the begging of his day, I suppose.

Despite the problems in DS, I think it can still produce some results if I use high magnification is areas of high activity.

2024-05-24, 40 min animation of NW Surge and Floating Proms, Lunt130MT DS, ASI290, 2x Barlow, 15_03_06 UT by H- Alpha, on Flickr

Do you have any idea on how I could avoid the lack of homogeneity in light intensity between frames? The Auto-Histogram option while capturing cannot work in this case, since the change of light intensity of the surge would make the situation worst, I suppose.


Best wishes,
Alexandros

[ffellah]

That is a magnificent animation, Alexandros. Nice to see you back posting

Franco

[rigel123]

Now that looks terrific, nothing like how the full disks you posted in your other post. Love the action! If you happen to have Pixinsight it has a pretty strong feature for balancing brightness between frames known as Batch Linear Fit.

[marktownley]

Nice animation, the scope works fine in hi-res mode.

[H-Alpha]

Thanks a lot Franko, Warren and Mark!

Your words are encouraging. I should try more with the DS in hi-res mode.

If you happen to have Pixinsight it has a pretty strong feature for balancing brightness between frames known as Batch Linear Fit.

Thanks a lot Warren. I remembered there was something in PixInsight, but did not remember the name of the script. I tried it and it does not seem to have any effect on the images. I tried also the LinearFit on two of the frames and again I saw no effect and the error "Incompatible image geometry". I suppose this refers to plate solving and since there are no stars to plate solve the images, the script does not work. Is this the case according to you? Have you used it with solar images or only with Deep Sky photos?

Best wishes,
Alexandros

[rigel123]

Thanks a lot Franko, Warren and Mark!

Your words are encouraging. I should try more with the DS in hi-res mode.

If you happen to have Pixinsight it has a pretty strong feature for balancing brightness between frames known as Batch Linear Fit.

Thanks a lot Warren. I remembered there was something in PixInsight, but did not remember the name of the script. I tried it and it does not seem to have any effect on the images. I tried also the LinearFit on two of the frames and again I saw no effect and the error "Incompatible image geometry". I suppose this refers to plate solving and since there are no stars to plate solve the images, the script does not work. Is this the case according to you? Have you used it with solar images or only with Deep Sky photos?

Best wishes,
Alexandros

I actually use it quite frequently with my solar animations when there is either a rise in brightness from beginning to end due to the sun rising higher in the sky or to balance out times when clouds might change the histogram. I had someone else tell me that they got the "Incompatible Image Geometry" message when they tried it. I always crop my frames in Photoshop so they are all the same and have not come up against this error once I have exported the frames as files and then brought them into Pixinsight. It does not work on inverted images however since they are typically so dark. If you want to post the two frames you tried I can give it a shot just to see what I can do.

[H-Alpha]

I actually use it quite frequently with my solar animations when there is either a rise in brightness from beginning to end due to the sun rising higher in the sky or to balance out times when clouds might change the histogram. I had someone else tell me that they got the "Incompatible Image Geometry" message when they tried it. I always crop my frames in Photoshop so they are all the same and have not come up against this error once I have exported the frames as files and then brought them into Pixinsight. It does not work on inverted images however since they are typically so dark. If you want to post the two frames you tried I can give it a shot just to see what I can do.

Thanks once more Warren.
While you were answering my question, I searched for the geometry and was not related to plate solving but to the image geometry in terms of x and y pixels, exactly as you wrote. After cropping them all, the batch linear fit worked with no errors, BUT the adjusted images are really not good. They loose their sharpness and become very pale, like if only the lightness (and not the levels) were adjusted...

It may be due to the inverted images as you say. I will try to work it a bit more and if not I will send you the two extreme frames (first and last). Where and how to send them? Just attach them here?

All the best,
Alexandros

[Rudi]

Beautiful!!!

May I ask, how did you made this?
A series of videos, each stacked into an image, and then images made into an animation?
(A lot of hard work, unless it can be scripted somehow)

[H-Alpha]

Beautiful!!!

May I ask, how did you made this?
A series of videos, each stacked into an image, and then images made into an animation?
(A lot of hard work, unless it can be scripted somehow)

Thanks Rudi.

Yes. These were 40 captures of 60 seconds (40 videos). Then I batch-stacked them in Autostakkert.
Then I batch-processed them in ImPPG (after saving the ImPPG processing settings that I liked for one of the frames).
Using self made actions (nothing special) I batch-process all the frames in PS (File-->Scripts-->Image processor) and add colour.
I then import all the frames into PS (Scripts-->Load files into Stack) while checking the Align box and crop.
(align images could be performed in ImPPG, where I make it usually, but in this case it did not work)
I then create the video animation in PS (Window-->Timeline-->Make frames from Layers) and save it as animated GIF (Export-->Save for web)

I hope this helps, so that you also can create animations.

There are also a couple of good youtube videos on creating solar animations.

Best wishes,
Alexandros

[Rudi]

Thanks a lot for the explanation Alexandros.

I’ll try with my software suite; AutoStakkert, AstroArt and FFmpeg. If I succeed, I’ll certainly share the result, procedure and scripts here on SolarChat! ;-)

However - the weather has changed here to very typical Danish summer, clouds, windy, rain …

[KMH]

Terrific animation!

Kevin

[rigel123]

I actually use it quite frequently with my solar animations when there is either a rise in brightness from beginning to end due to the sun rising higher in the sky or to balance out times when clouds might change the histogram. I had someone else tell me that they got the "Incompatible Image Geometry" message when they tried it. I always crop my frames in Photoshop so they are all the same and have not come up against this error once I have exported the frames as files and then brought them into Pixinsight. It does not work on inverted images however since they are typically so dark. If you want to post the two frames you tried I can give it a shot just to see what I can do.

Thanks once more Warren.
While you were answering my question, I searched for the geometry and was not related to plate solving but to the image geometry in terms of x and y pixels, exactly as you wrote. After cropping them all, the batch linear fit worked with no errors, BUT the adjusted images are really not good. They loose their sharpness and become very pale, like if only the lightness (and not the levels) were adjusted...

It may be due to the inverted images as you say. I will try to work it a bit more and if not I will send you the two extreme frames (first and last). Where and how to send them? Just attach them here?

All the best,
Alexandros

Yes, you can simply post them here. If you try to go from brighter to darker it ends up a mess, I always go from the darker and make them lighter so they don’t lose as much contrast. I’ll probably revert them to positive images before trying.

[H-Alpha]

Yes, you can simply post them here. If you try to go from brighter to darker it ends up a mess, I always go from the darker and make them lighter so they don’t lose as much contrast. I’ll probably revert them to positive images before trying.

Dear Warren,

I did not succeed anything decent so far, so I attach here two frames in case you have the right way and you can help.
I think they are difficult ones...

1.jpg (453.03 KiB) Viewed 458 times

2.jpg (433.29 KiB) Viewed 458 times

Thanks in advance,
Alexandros

[rigel123]

Yes, you can simply post them here. If you try to go from brighter to darker it ends up a mess, I always go from the darker and make them lighter so they don’t lose as much contrast. I’ll probably revert them to positive images before trying.

Dear Warren,

I did not succeed anything decent so far, so I attach here two frames in case you have the right way and you can help.
I think they are difficult ones...

1.jpg

2.jpg

Thanks in advance,
Alexandros

Actually, I would need the raw images unprocessed since you have actually made the disk inverted and the proms positive so there is no way to actually balance them.

[arnedanielsen]

Very nice, Alexandros!

[H-Alpha]

Actually, I would need the raw images unprocessed since you have actually made the disk inverted and the proms positive so there is no way to actually balance them.

My dear Warren, it worked!!!!
Thanks to your comment and advice!
It was my mistake that I did not use the raw files.
Trying once more after your comment while changing the workflow, everything went smoothly. :-)
I only need to experiment a bit more with the best reference frame and then I will re-post the animation, because it becomes really better without the flickering.

Thanks so much for your help!

All the best,
Alexandros

[rigel123]

Glad that worked out!

[DeepSolar64]

Nice work Alexandros.

I get discouraged trying to image in doublestack using my Coronado SolarMax II 90 as well. I always find it very difficult to get an evenly tuned and evenly illuminated disc. I usually get much better results visually using that setup. However single stack does much better imaging using that scope and I usually more often than not image in single stack using my Coronado 90.

James

[MAURITS]

Excellent animation Alexandros.