Solar Activity in Mid-December

 

The details revealed through double-stacking are just remarkable.  When I first began solar imaging, the prominences at the edge of the Sun were my favorite, but the more I image the more I'm enthralled by all the activity on the disk itself.  It's like watching solar weather patterns from 93 million miles away.

Photo Details

December 12, 2021

Lunt Ha 60mm double-stacked solar telescope

ZWO ASI178MM 

SharpCap - 8 Bit Mono

Image Stacking in AutoStakkert
Wavelet Filtering in Registax
Final Adjustments in Photoshop

Andromeda Galaxy

The Andromeda Galaxy is one of my favorites and never seems to disappoint.  Also known as Messier 31, this galaxy is often compared to our own Milky Way since it has a mass of the same order of magnitude (1 trillion solar masses).  However, it has an estimated 1 trillion stars which is about double of our home galaxy.  The light in the photo began it's journey to Earth about 2.5 million years ago when we were just beginning the ice ages which would last until about 11,700 years ago.

Photo Details

November 7, 2021

AstroTech 65Q on VX Mount

SBIG STF-8300C Camera

Skyglow filter

57 subframes at 3 minutes/frame

Total Exposure Time = 2 hours 51 minutes
Image Acquisition in CCDOps
Image Stacking in Deep Sky Tracker
Image Processing in PhotoShop