This is from a single image of a 21-July-2004 session with the 105mm AP Traveler/AP900GTO, Coronado Solarmax90/BF30, SBIG STL11K CCD, and TeleVue 4x Powermate, taken at 0.022 seconds. The exposures were kept relatively short, so as to prevent "burnout" and bloating of the plage surrounding AR652 (the prominent grouping just left of center). North is on top and East is to the left.
Still dealing with the Newton's Rings issue, but progress on a work-around solution is being made (check out the Newton's Rings page), though only minor fringing appeared during this session (seen here as horizontal texturing running above and to the right of AR652). The image itself was used to create a custom flat, mildly reducing the amount of limb darkening in an effort to enhance detail there.
As is my now my customary approach, a single image was processed in Images Plus via three separate paths, yielding images for the surface, "hairy" limbs, and prominence portions. They were then composited using PhotoShop CS, which was also used for the final "polish", size reduction, and web (JPEG) conversions.
Having been aware of exposure limits due to the brilliance of the AR652 complex, I decided it might be neat to explore that hot region via a substantially faster (darker) exposure. Reducing the time from 0.022 seconds to 0.010 seconds removed the bloating from the plage, as can be seen below, cropped from full-disk images. |
