Imaging the Sun

Forums Sun Solar photography Imaging the Sun

#585220
David Arditti
Participant

You should get very good results from your setup Tony. Have a look at FireCapture (which is free) for video capture with the ASI764MC. I don’t know how it compares with SharpCap for this purpose, but I use FireCapture. The exposure required is likely to be in the 0.001s range, but in FireCapture you can assess this using the live histogram. You ensure the camera levels are about 75% filled. Gain should be quite high. You capture a video between 30 and 60s length as an SER file, then align in AutoStakkert! using the ‘surface’ alignment function and a grid of alignment points, then select say the best 50% of frames to stack. You can then sharpen the image in another program, or try the sharpening function in Autostakkert!.

One thing I do which I find is beneficial is to use an IR-pass filter on the camera (either in a nosepiece or a filter wheel) in addition to the objective solar filter. (I don’t have the Seymour, I have Thousand Oaks). This steadies the seeing. The result will be a red image. Other people use the Baader solar continuum filter (which is green). Basically you will always improve the seeing by excluding blue light. You can capture the data in FireCapture in mono (no de-Bayering).

Best of luck.