The Sun in H-alpha light

A Coronado Solarmax II, 60, BF15 H-alpha scope was mounted on a Celestron AVX EQ, GOTO mount. A QHY 5L-II-M CMOS camera was placed at the prime focus and AstroDMx Capture for Linux was used to capture 2000-frame SER files of two overlapping regions of the Sun exposed both for the surface details and also for the prominences.

The best 50% of the frames were stacked in Autostakkert!, wavelet processed in Registax. The two solar disk images were stitched in Microsoft ICE and the two prominenve images were stitched manually in the Gimp. The disk and prominence images were combined and post-processed in the Gimp 2.10.

Click on an image to get a closer look

AR2768 and AR2767 are clearly visible on the left and right of the disk respectively. Also a substantial prominence is visible.

The image made negative and colourised slightly 

to facilitate observing the surface and limb features

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A DMK 21AU04.AS CCD camera was fitted with just the lens from a x2 Barlow and the region with the large prominence was imaged using AstroDMx Capture for Linux.

1000-frame SER files were captured, exposed for the disk and the prominences. The best 50% of the frames were stacked in Autostakkert!, wavelet processed in Registax and the final images were combined and post-processed in the Gimp 2.10.

Final image

The image made negative and colourised slightly 

to facilitate observing the surface and limb features

Steve Wainwright