Scattered Thoughts . . .

T wo or three times a year, I put together a small photo book of photos I have shot documenting some of the things we've done so I can send it to my father.  We haven't traveled at all since the beginning of the pandemic and we are still in no hurry for that.  Well...  we would like to travel but the risk is still too great.  I've already had the virus three times and I am still experiencing lingering problems due to the virus so I'm in no hurry to expose myself further.  My health was bad enough before these lingering problems due to the virus.  I don't need to continue to expose myself and my health to more problems. While I was sorting through photos and choosing photos to put in this photo book, I came across some of my solar images from a session in July that were worth writing about here in my blog.   I specifically remember this particular session because I was able to watch a solar flare erupt and recede for about an hour.  It was a pretty amazing and very m

I finally purchased a much needed dedicated solar astronomy camera and it arrived last night!   I've been using a sort of generic beginner astronomy camera (well...  maybe one step above entry level) meant primarily for guide scopes and planetary imaging.  There are far worse cameras than the one I've been using until now but this camera is not really an ideal choice for solar imaging.  It has been slow, difficult to use, noisy, and the image quality has been seriously lacking.  Producing good results out of this old astronomy camera has been difficult, frustrating and requiring a lot of extra post-processing.  I've had to work very hard at finessing fine detail out of the images and I've only managed to succeed at doing that because of my decades of photography experience.  I admit that I've managed to produce some nice imagery with the old camera but it has been difficult to accomplish requiring a lot of extra work and time.  Plus, much of the data from the old c

O ver the past week, in between bouts of lousy health, I have been working on making two homemade solar flat caps.   A flat cap comes in handy when imaging the sun.  The flat cap will diffuse the view for images that are called "flat frames".  These flat caps are placed over the front end of the telescope, temporarily, to shoot these flat frames.  The flat frames are then divided into the stack of normal image frames.   A good flat frame will allow me to create even light across the frame (solar filters create mildly uneven light across the frame).  It will also help to eliminate any dust specks on the image files.   Of course, keeping the camera's sensor clean also eliminates specks and blobs of dust but using a flat frame is another process to effectively smooth out many of these types of defects in the solar image stacks.  This little project called for scrounging up various household materials and some hobby tools.  I always have some thin styrene on hand and that def