Tuesday, April 18, 2017

The Sun 4/18/2017

Although we're well past SolarMax and the solar disk looks blank on many days, it can still be interesting in H-alpha. This is a single-image capture (not a stack) taken with the DS16C and PST-DS. The active area and prominence at the top of the image is sunspot 2644, a returning spot that produced a number of M-Class flares in early April.

The illumination of the image is somewhat uneven. This lack of uniformity is caused by the PST filter's "sweet spot." The DS filter reduces this effect, but it does not eliminate it. For the best aesthetic images of the sun with the PST, it's better to stitch together a mosaic of separate captures of separate areas of the solar disk.


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