The Sun continues to be very active with Active Regions capable of producing X-Class flares. In addition to the white light image, taken with the Seestar, is an H-Alpha image taken with a PST-DS (Solarmax II) and Mallincam DS-10C camera. The image is inverted to show the details of swirling plasma on more detail.
This image of M106 is a stack of 1060 x 10s integrations (about 2.9 hours in total). The image was stacked using the Seestar stacking software. I used Siril for photometric and histogram adjustment, as well as background extraction. I followed with Topaz AI for noise reduction and for 2X enlargement. I then did final tweaking in Affinity (saturation, Astroflat plugin). It's interesting to note that the stacking process dramatically reduced rotation artifacts--they are barely visible on this image. I've also included an annotated image.
The Sun on May 29, 2024. Note the changes in ARs 3699/91--perhaps the group is showing signs of decay?
The Sun on May 28, 2024. The main sunspot group just off center are ARs 3699/3691. At the edge of the disk. AR 3664 has traveled around the sun, and is reemerging on the Sun's limb as AR 3697. Both groups have the potential to produce X-Class flares. I've also included a closeup of ARs 3699/3691, below.
Here's a quick record image of today's sun between clouds. The image has some artifacts due to cloud processing during stacking, but it clearly shows today's active regions. ARs 3691 and 3695 are adjacent and are the largest on the disk. AR 3691 has the potential to produce X-Class flares. I've also provided a cropped image of the spots.
I captured the Sun yesterday with the Seestar, and yet again was amazed at the performance of this scope. Here is a full disk image, plus a couple of close crops of sunspot groups, showing some really rich details, including surrounding granularity.
I took the Seestar on the road for the Holiday weekend (which was one of the reasons for buying it in the first place). Here is the Flower Moon of May 23. I've also included a close crop. The terracing on Copernicus is c;learly visible--not bad for a 50mm APO!
The Sun continues to be active with a fine crop of developing sunspots. M-Class flares are possible.
I've never been able to get a decent image of M109, mostly because of its location in the sky relative to my rather forested observation site. The Seestar solved that problem; Its portability enabled me to put it in a location where I could perform longer integrations. Despite clouds, I was able to capture 79 minutes of data. While the resulting image is noisy, the weakly barred structure of the galaxy is clearly visible, along with faint dust lanes. It is thought the galaxy has a close resemblance in size and structure to our own Milky Way. M109's satellite galaxies, UGC 6969, UGC 6940 and UGC 6923 are also visible in the image. I hope to be able to collect more data on this object once the clouds clear here in North Carolina!
I captured this image of the Moon under good seeing on May 16. Seeing was good during the capture. This image is from a stack of the best 30% of 1800 RAW frames. Stacking in Autostakkert with light wavelets in Registax. I didn't drizzle, but performed a 2x enlargement of the image using the High Fidelity mode of Topaz Gigapixel AI, which in my opinion does a much better job. Here is rhe full image and a crop of the Lunar Apennine Valley area (the valley is in the center). The image was achievable only because of the excellent quality of the APO optics in the Seestar.
Seeing was good today for solar imaging. Here's a full disk image and a closeup of some of today's spots. This image is a combination of the best 30% of 1300 raw frames. Stacked in Autostakkert and very light wavelet adjustment in Registax.
There are multiple Active Regions (ARs), capable of producing M-Class flares.
After torching off some monster X-Class flares that sparked the most severe geomagnetic storms since 2005, AR 3664 is moving off the Sun’s disk. Auroras were visible a far south as the Florida Keys and even here in Charlotte, although I could not see them from my location. This image is the best 10% of a 1-minute AVI file.
Here's a quick sot of M109. The image is 65 minutes of data taken before haze rolled in and put a stop to things. Seestar with Ha/OIII filter.
Today's Sun has two groups of flaring sunspots--AR 3663 and AR 3664. Both ARs have the potential to direct powerful, X-Class flares at Earth. AR 3663 is so large (`10X Earth's diamater), it should be visible to the naked eye. I took a look with my solar specs, but I could not be sure I actually saw it. The images below show the full disk, with a zoomed image of AR 3664.
We had lots of clouds today, but I was able to capture this single image. The clouds really help to boost the contrast on the spots!
I just got around to tweaking this image of the Whirlpool. It only has about 50 mins of data, so it’s noisy, but I think it shows the little Seestar’s capabilities under less than ideal conditions.
NGC 5907 aka the Knife Edge or Splinter galaxy, is an edge on spiral galaxy in Draco. At an apparent magnitude of 11.1, it's not the easiest of objects to image, and last night was particularly challenging. The clouds broke for a couple of hours and I was able to capture 100 minutes of 20 second exposures. Conditions were far from ideal. Most of the time, I was imaging through thin cloud under Bortle 9 conditions, but the Seestar only failed to stak about 5 frames in the whole run. Contrast was low on the Seestar image, but I was able to boost it with Siril and Affinity Photo. The result isn't terrible. It;s rather noisy, but a hint of detail in the dark dust lanes can be seen.
Solar activity continues to increase. Today, I was capturing images through breaks in what has been almost solid cloud. Below the full disk image is a crop showing AR 3633 to the right and AR 3664 to the left. AR 3633 is unleashing X-Class flares (the most powerful the Sun produces) and AR 3664 may start to flare soon!
I did a little more processing on mu M101 image, removing the stars and tweaking the galaxy itself. The contrast pops a little more and I was able to shrink the star sizes in the Nebulosity 4 software package.
The Sun was in and out of clouds today, so I had to take a few single images rather than a movie. Interestingly, the clouds really enhanced the contrast on the spots. I was hoping to get out the Ha scope today, too, but conditions just aren’t cooperating.
The Whirlpool Galaxy provided another test for the Seestar. This image is a star of 154 x 20s images, for a total integration time of about 51 minutes--much shorter than I would have liked, but I had to terminate the imaging session earlier than usual. The image is consequently a little more noisy that I would like, but it's acceptable as a test image.
The Sun on May 2, 2024. AR 3663 (the larger sunspor area above the center of the disk) , has the potential for X-Class flares.
Conditions here in Charlotte were excellent for imaging last night. I'm still testing the Seestar and picked M 101 as a target. The image below is a processed stack of 299 x 20s images. I'm quite pleased with the result. For comparison, I've also uploaded an image captured by the RASA with a 90-minute integration (its a little larger in size), so the actual imaging times were quite similar. close to $10,000 worth of gear versus $500. Pretty amazing!
The Sun continues quiet today, although AR 3654 (closeup image), has the potential for X-Class flares.
