3 replies to this topic

[rigel123]

After it was suggested that imaging in 16 bit (14 bit in reality) might help with maintaining details in the penumbra in sunspots I gave it a try in less than perfect skies this morning.  I would say the results look good even though the image was taken through some high clouds.  Boy it kills frame rate though since shooting the full disk took it to 19 fps from my usual 42 fps in 8 bit.  I should have shot the disk in both but clouds had other ideas, so that is for another day.  Here is the disk from this morning.  Orion ED80T stopped down to 40mm, Lunt BF1200 CaK filter, Saturn-M SQR.  Best 50 frames from 500.  You can click on the link to view in full resolution in Astrobin.

[gstrumol]

That's one beautiful disk!  

[Foc]

A wonderful disc!  I doubt my seeing is at the Shanghai (Florida, Vietnam,  sometimes Montana) level that makes 16 bit imaging worthwhile.

 

While I find such CaK discs lovely, I feel remiss in that I do not know enough to extract much meaning from their nuances.  As I recall, with this filter you are picking up Ca at deeper levels and showing up plege distribution better, but beyond that can you take the image and conclude that something in particular is happening other than a better idea of what plege levels are present?

[rigel123]

Thanks Gary and Foc!  Yes, Foc, the main attraction to me is simply the fact of imaging another level of the chromosphere just below the layer we see in Ha and just above the photosphere.  The highlighting of the plage showing where magnetic energy is building and although I don’t frequently do animations in CaK it offers another view of activity in a different point of view.