Sun Spots (20230113) – lucky me! (firstLight)

Sun Spots (20230113) – lucky me!

Sun Spots (20230113) – Lucky Me!

Unexpectedly the completely overcast sky opened a pale blue hole before noon which looked like being big enough to setup my equipment and starting an imaging session. Though I have to manually setup and connect everything and start my lovely Astroberry, plug the power and USB cables, I am quite fast with this, because I did it over and over again.

Nevertheless, within minutes this 'blue hole'' closed within 3 minutes and I noticed the bright sunlight vanished ...

Impatiently I looked up to the clouds (suddenly sooo big and extended) and I thought about giving up. Then another milky bluish hole opened up and while the Sun was still behind some thinner clouds, I raised the gain and did my best to manually focus on the Sun disk's border. On my Linux desktop display at 100% size it actually looked quite good ... better than expected.

Seeing was bad again ... *sigh* ... but the Sun disk itself seemed to look clearer and contrasty than so many past days and weeks. Through my telephoto lens (plus Baader Astrosolar Filter) I could immediately discern the penumbra around the most Sun spots, though the disk's border wobbled quite significant, as well as the spots were dancing, see: version B

Again, right after I finished my first 1000 frames sequence, big clouds closed the pale blue hole again while I already had started a second sequence ...

I cancelled it. The whole afternoon and evening stayed overcast with beginning strong haze and rain (snow on the mountains). At least I had my 1000 frames from the first sequence and ... to my surprise, I instantly noticed a rather good stacking result ... lucky me!

Post processing was straight forward and done in minutes because I could re-use parameter sets from a session with very good seeing in early October 2022.

Conclusion: After long I can show an as good as possible (with my small equipment) result today. I consider this to be one of my best alltime Sun disk images. Probably the best ... despite the mentioned conditions and challenges.

< = >

Final
Original
B

B

Title: Seeing Animation (20230113)

Description: Bad seeing as too often, between stormy clouds, haze and rain / snowfall. Though the Sun spots dance and the Sun's border wobbles, the penumbrae and other detail appear cleaner and less milky than in many past weeks.

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