afternoon imaging (Etobicoke)

Just got home after an enjoyable afternoon at Manuel's.

The original plan was to get together in the afternoon and image the Sun. But we changed to a tentative status late in the week when the weather started to turn. Manuel would assess the weather and make the call in the morning.

At 11:32 AM, via Facebook, he said, "We are screwed. No go." I noted it had been rather nice a couple of hours prior. Too bad. We chatted about various astronomy and RASC matters then closed off at 12:19 PM. He said he'd take another look an hour later. I looked out the window to the north. Grim. Looked like rain...

Around 1:40 PM, he phoned. "Let's do it!" There were more patches of blue. OK. We agreed to rendezvous at 3:00.

He had the DX tripod, mount already attached, ready to go in the kitchen. 8" with piggyback refractor on the floor against the counter. Laptop and various accessories on the table. Table and chair were already outside on the deck. We quickly set up. I fired up and programmed the mount. Attached the visual Kendrick solar filter and centred on the Sun. The tracking was pretty good. Sunspots!

A large pale spot was nearly centre: 1689. There was a very dark, large spot along the right edge (er, eastern limb): 1692. I saw a smaller spot with a sprinkling of very small spots between the two: 1690 and 1691. Clouds, from Earth, drifted through the field.

Meanwhile Manuel set up the computer inside the little fabric canopy.

We quickly reconfigured the refractor for imaging. Swapped to the photographic Kendrick filter. Installed the DFK camera.

I moved the 'scope down while exchanging the filters. Partly to prevent dumping the full Sun into to OTA. And to more easily reach the front of the tube. Realised as I did this that I might not hit the target on the way back. Slewed back to the approximate position using the on-board sun finder.

Manuel did not want to drive the mount with NexRemote.

Centering and aligning and focusing went surprisingly well. Soon we were capturing short 60 fps videos, about 800 to 900 frames. Manuel said he planned to make a mosaic. We collected frames for 6 overlapping panels. We did it! Beat the weather! We retired to the kitchen and celebrated.

He showed me the new Tele Vue 5.0 Powermate. He's keen to use it on Saturn...

While I was at the kitchen table, I read the tags from the computer tent. And spotted "wings." Little flaps at the left and right side. Manuel was happy. This would facilitate connections at the side of the computer, like for his USB mouse (with huge transceiver), and the USB connection to the camera.

He started stacking frames, in Registax, from the first video. It took a while. But when it finally finished and he started playing with the first level wavelets, things started looking pretty good. It will be interesting to see what the complete mosaic looks like...

Encouraged Manuel to memorise the focusing position on the draw tube. Orion actually marks it. 4.5 is the spot he could return to in the future.