Today’s new solar photography tweaks include:
- Lowering the camera gain to 110 from 150 because 110 is closer to unity for this particular camera
- Increasing the exposure duration from 5msec to 10msec
- Recording 10 minutes of video for each AVI
Lowering the camera gain to unity theoretically reduces the amount of camera amplifier noise. Increasing the exposure duration compensates for the decreased amplification. The goal is to get the best image quality – trading image noise from atmospheric turbulence (blurring) for amplifier noise. The longer AVIs consume much more disk space (50+ GB per video), but this allows stack nearly 1000 frames to make a final image. The goal is improved detail in the final image.
The solar disk, with the scope tuned to optimize details other than sunspots, looked like this:
There is a large prominence on the Eastern limb (left side) and a bright plage just South of it. That plage was the source of a powerful solar flare (x-ray and gamma-ray discharge) that caused a radio blackout over Africa earlier today. The most interesting regions are showcased below.
The Western prominences include a very faint structure in the lower part of the image that rises high above the solar surface.
The sunspot view today was remarkable because it also revealed prominences on the Southwestern limb that were not visible in the first image above.
The largest sunspot groups and prominence visible with this instrument appear below:
