The Sun continues with strong activity today, with AR3765 and AR3766 (center in the cropped image) producing X-Class flares. The Sun image stack was captured with interruptions from passing hazy clouds—hence the processing artifacts on the full disk image.
Here’s an image of Sh 2-132, the Lion Nebula. This is a stack of almost 3 hours of 10 second integrations with the Seestar,
AR3765-67 is producing close to X-Class energy flares. I've included a closeup of that region.
AR3765-67 (marked), has the potential to produce X-Class flares. I've also included a cropped, Ha image of this area. The image lacks sharpness asI was shooting through light cloud, but it still shows the turbulent nature of this area of the Sun.
The Sun on July 17, 2024. AR3751 (marked) is growing rapidly and has the potential to produce significant flares.
Messier 106 is an active nucleus, Type 2 Seyfert galaxy. It has a supermassive black hole in its nucleus. This image was taken with the Seestar, and shows the turbulent detail in the disk and central region of the galaxy. The image is just over 5 hours of integration, processed in Siril, Topaz Denoise AI, Affinity Photo, and Photoshop. I’ve also added a cropped and enhanced version of the inner region.
AR3738 continues to harbor energy for X-Class flares as it exits the solar disk. Meanwhile, between the 6 and 7 o'clock position on the image, AR3751 is gowing rapidly and may pose a risk for strong flares.
AR 3738 continues to develop as it moves off the disk. It is now capable of producing X-Class flares--the most powerful flares the Sun can produce.
Here's a reprocess of my earlier M 101 image with drizzle. It's a much more detailed image than the original. This is a stack of a little more than 2 hours of data.
I finally managed to get the Drizzle function working in Siril. This is a pretty big deal as Seestar images are somewhat undersmapled and are also dithered. In other words, they aere perfect candidates for dithering. I ran my NGC 7000 images through the process, and the results are an astonishing improvement in quality, contrast, and noise. I look forward to reprocecssing other images using this workflow.
The Sun today is relatively quiet, with AR3738 able to produce only low-level M-Class flares. I've included a closeup of this area. Pix taken with Seestar; best 10% of 2000 frames.
Here are (yet more!) NGC7000 images. This time, I decided to stack and do most adjustments in Siril (including star removal and recomposition), with some very minor tweaks in Affinity and some sharpening in Astrosurface. I ran the finished image through Topaz Denoising and Gigapixel AI high fidelity mode. Siril stacked a little over 3 hours of 10 second integrations; the stack was definitely better than that produced by the Seestar. One image is a little over processed to show detail; the other is a little more restrained...
The Sun on July 6, 2024. The Sun on July 6, 2024. Emerging spot AR3738 is growing rapidly and is a potential source for flares.
The Sun on July 4, 2024--maybe some fireworks for Independence Day as AR3729 (marked) has a 'beta-gamma' magnetic field capable of producing M-Class flares.
Due to my less than ideal local horizon, long imaging sessions are pretty much out of the question. The maximum I can achieve on any one night is about 90 minutes on a given object. Over three nights, I was able to capture 2.4 hours of data on the North America Nebula. To get a really decent image requires about double that integration time, and I'm hoping to capture more as the weather permits. Here are tow images so far, one in the obligatory H II red, and the other a fanciful pseudo-Hubble palette. The Hubble mix (courtesy Siril) rather blew the highlights and added lots of noise for some reason, but it's an interesting contrast to the original image.
