I have been reading this sub for a while, and trying to absorb as much as I can. I've been doing night astro for about 1.5 years, with just a little white light solar now and then. Yesterday my Lunt 50 came in the mail and today was my first go with it (first Ha scope). After seeing the Apollo-M mini recommended several times here by Marty and others I got that as well, which also arrived yesterday.
This morning was clear and relatively nice, so it gave me a good opportunity to practice a little for the 4:16 pm transit. The first one for me. I don't do much visual observing, but always try out a new scope by eye. It was quite amazing to tune in the etalon for the first time and watch the prominences and other details appear (there may be something to this visual thing after all). After that, the camera went on and I tried various spacers and powermates, and tried Firecapture on the sun for the first time. While the helical focuser works fine, it's not my fav, but it held focus once set. Having to back the diagonal out of it to reach focus with some accessories was unnerving until I found the right spacers.
After the morning's and early afternoon's practice, and lunch (don't forget lunch), I took a 10 minute drive to the transit path (which moved 15 minutes closer since I last checked) and got set up just a few minutes before the event. The sun was covered by high thin clouds, but I was still keen to try it, and I'm very happy with how day 1 went.
Lunt 50 SS, B600
Apollo-M mini, no barlow
Firecapture with ROI (120fps)
10 year old macbookpro
Siril to extract the frames of the transit (120) plus a few for a little padding (174/10524) to tif
Pixinsight Solar toolbox to batch process
Resolve for video
Tweak in photoshop for the single images
I hope Youtube links are ok for the vid.
Now I have to dig into the processing all the videos from this morning. A lot to learn.
Cheers,
Ed
from NH
