FINALLY!

[CarlGreen]

Its taken me 5 years, countless swear words, A huge amount of frustration and a boat load of dosh that I daren't tell the missus about! but I have finally managed to get a picture of a celectial object! (The Sun).......Now if only I can stay awake beyond 8.30 of an evening I might move on to the moon!

I would welcome any suggestions as to how I can improve (Like how to get rid of the dust bunnies, I copied a procedure to get flats and apply them, but obviously didnt work!) so any pointers would be greatly apprecaited.

Thanks

[admin]

Hi,

well done on your first image!

My technique for flat frames when capturing solar images is to use translucent plastic over the front of the telescope to diffuse the light from the sun. One option is the plastic inner bag from a breakfast cereal packet, which is often translucent. Another is that some spiral bound notebooks come with a translucent plastic cover over the front page, which can be really good for this. Both of these work well if they are big enough to cover your scope. Once you have one of these set up, the 'Capture Flat' tool in the SharpCap capture menu should do most of the rest of the work.

cheers,

Robin

[CarlGreen]

Hi,

well done on your first image!

My technique for flat frames when capturing solar images is to use translucent plastic over the front of the telescope to diffuse the light from the sun. One option is the plastic inner bag from a breakfast cereal packet, which is often translucent. Another is that some spiral bound notebooks come with a translucent plastic cover over the front page, which can be really good for this. Both of these work well if they are big enough to cover your scope. Once you have one of these set up, the 'Capture Flat' tool in the SharpCap capture menu should do most of the rest of the work.

cheers,

Robin

Hi Robin, (Please move this to the appropriate forum if here is not the place to ask this........

I have just finished a box of Crunchy Nut Clusters so will rescue the inner bag from the recycling bin!

Thanks for this, couple of questions if I may.........

1. Do I need to "Double Up" the thickness of the bag? (Or is a single skin enough?)
2. Do I need to "Defocus" or do I literally just cover the end of the scope whilst still lined up on my target?
3. Do I need to change exposure and gain settings?
4 . If I am imaging (Say the top left quarter of the Sun (And will image the other 3 Quarters (Top Right, Bottom left, bottom right) in order to create a Mosaic, do I need to do different flats for each one? (Or does the flats cover all of the images taken in one session, regardless of what your looking at?) (And so does the same apply to Planetary and deep sky? (Basically if I am imaging Jupiter and produce flats for it, can I use those flats for an image of say Saturn as long as its done in the same imaging session, regardless of refocusing, slewing etc)

Thank you

Carl

[admin]

Hi Carl,

I didn't double up the layers, but maybe in some circumstances you need to - if you can still see any detail with one layer then try a double layer.

You should *not* adjust the focus for taking flats - the idea is to leave the optical configuration exactly the same for flats and lights, so that means don't adjust the focus or rotate the camera, etc.

You will need to adjust settings, most likely increase exposure to bring the image level back up as the diffusion of the translucent plastic will drop the brightness a lot. You should also move the telescope so that the whole of the image is of the sun (no dark edges/corners) as this will help ensure the flat is made correctly. Once you have it, you can use the same flat for each position on the sun. If you try to make a flat with just one side of the frame illuminated, you will get a flat with one side brighter than the other, which will then be trying to correct for that brightness difference and it will all be a mess...

Hope this helps,

Robin