First light with the Lunt.

[+Graham]

Had a very enjoyable day yesterday drove down to see Stephen to collect the Lunt.

Spent a couple of hours chatting to Stephen and his lovely wife, looking at his kit and having a peek through his new solar scope.

Then I wandered over to see John ( silent running )

Spent another wonderful relaxing time just chilling out and looking over his kit including the enormous binos and discussing some improvements he wants to do to them.

After getting back home I quickly set the Lunt up in the obs so I could get to see the last of the sun before it disappeared behind the trees.

The views were staggering compared to my old PST.

This morning was to be the true test.

Despite the hazy cloud I stuck in the Life cam and had a crack at imaging.

Focusing was a pain as I had to do it manually.

Look at the screen walk round to the obs give the focuser a tweak then go and look at the screen ect ect ect. Far too much walking in this heat. 

Managed to get a couple of shots.

The focus is a bit soft and I still need to get to grips with the fine tuning of two Etalons 

Spent some time this afternoon fitting an electric focuser to it only for the clouds to roll in so I never got to test it out.

Still I think I am going to be doing a lot more sun bothering from now on.

 

 

 

[Smithysteve]

Good for you Graham.

You obviously had a grand day out and it sounds a great result with the Lunt ?

All good stuff, and you got to see some sun for a change too! ??

[+Ibbo]

oh thats going to be fun

 

[+Graham]

2 hours ago, Smithysteve said:

Good for you Graham.

You obviously had a grand day out and it sounds a great result with the Lunt ?

All good stuff, and you got to see some sun for a change too! ?

It was a great day. 

2 hours ago, Ibbo said:

oh thats going to be fun

Need to have a chat with you about how you set up yours Steve. 

 

[Tweedledee]

I think you're going to thoroughly enjoy using that Graham. Love the colour. 

[+Ibbo]

I use Genika or Firecapture 

Get yourself a mono camera

II am guessing its a front mounted DS unit.

If so take it off and get it focused (don't get too hung up at this point on focus) and with gamma set to normal tune the internal etalon -if you are using a capture program with a histogram feature  tune it down till it is at its darkest

re attach the DS and tweak till you get the best features all over the disc I have to off set my disc tro one side a bit on the chip to get even illumination

 

practice

 

Set region of interest if you need to.

 

now drop gamma down to about 80% and increase the size of image (I use 200 to 300% %) to get focus

return gamma to normal the adujust so the histogram is nearly filled about 90 to 95%

 

I then capture 500 to 1000 frames but keep it below 1 min. I capture SER files but avi's are fine

 

capture several runs and keep checking the focus

 

I stack using Autostackkert 2

 

open AS2 and select your images if you are brave and want to try batch processing or do then one at a time

 

under the image stablisation tick surface

then analyse and let it run through

when its done you need to select the alignment points in the frame view box

i select moin brightness = )

AP sze to the smallest (I think it is 20) go bigger if useing a barlow

 

I select between 50 and 150 frames click stack

if you are doing batch processing go get a brew or take dog for a walk while it chews trough your gigabytes of collected data

 

using impgg I have saved a series of sharpening routines

i use LR decon sigma at ).9 and 300 to 600 iterations

under settings tick normalise brightness 0 to 100%

with the curve set to log leave smooth ticked and I drop gamma to 0.85%

 

save as a tiff 16 bit

 

again this can be done in batch settings mode

 

once out of impgg I use PS and have recorded an action

noise reduction strength 6 preserve detail 90%  reduce colour noise 45% sharpen detais 0%

smart sharpen (1) 30% @ 1 pix

smart sharpen (2 ) 30% 1 px   (I do tweak this down if the image is noisy)

convert to RGB (as impgg produces a mono image)

then I use my sun colour curve

 

adjust to your taste

 

then flip rotate as the "gong ha "site

 

so thats the false colour

mono is that in greyscale mode

invert is in ps under adjustments "inverse" and tweak of levels till it looks OK

 

ring of fire for proms I will type up later

 

[+Ibbo]

also have a look here

https://brierleyhillsolar.blogspot.co.uk/p/imaging-tutorials.html

 

and if they are any good drop Mark a line to say thanks

 

 

Edited July 25, 2016 by Ibbo

[+Graham]

You are a star. 

Thanks Steve. 

[philjay]

Welcome to the Lunt owners club Graham, nice first light.

 

Cant really add any tips to what Steve has already given, don't know about DS cos I aint got one, just cheap council Lunt single stack here

 

I use firecapture and find it very easy and intuitive.

 

Focus, zoom in as much as possible and focus, firecapture allows you to go to 200%

 

A mono camera is better but not essential I reckon. I do get better images with the mono IMGOH.

 

Have fun with mosaics they are really good to have a go at.

 

Its not very often I spend much time at the eyepiece on mine, I much prefer the control and contrast that the camera gives to observing.

 

 

[Stephen]

Nice images Graham the scope is not bad to