YOU can take this photo of the Sun. (Full Demo)

A viewer asked for a full breakdown of a quick and easy solar astrophoto session so here it is - warts and all. This rig is actually really small, cheap and portable - here is everything I used:
QHY200M Planetary Camera: bit.ly/4152EbY
Lunt40mm Solar Telescope: bit.ly/3sP8KMX
Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer GTI Tracking Mount: bit.ly/3sUFOXZ
SOFTWARE (All Free except Photoshop)
Firecapture - www.firecapture.de
AutoStakkert!4 - www.autostakkert.com
PIPP - pipp.software.informer.com
IMPPG - greatattractor.github.io/imppg/
Photoshop CS - www.adobe.com/
(obviously, you need a computer too.)
Support the channel by buying Dylan's Telescopes, Cameras & Equipment using the links below!
EQUIPMENT LIST
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Celestron 11" Edge HD Telescope
USA : bit.ly/3JB95JE
QHY200M Planetary Camera:
bit.ly/4152EbY
Celestron RASA F2 11" Telescope
USA : bit.ly/3Jy4Ezl
International : amzn.to/3ABsVBz
QHY268M Mono CMOS Camera
USA : bit.ly/33u4k5w
Skywatcher EQ8Rh Pro Mount
USA : bit.ly/3gTdWJX
AUS : bit.ly/3dxdRv1
Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer GTI Tracking Mount
USA : bit.ly/3sUFOXZ
International : amzn.to/3ABLAwQ
SkyWatcher EVOLUX Telescopes :
USA : bit.ly/36henwd
NexDome Observatory by Sidereal Trading (Australia)
www.siderealtrading.com.au
Celestron RASA 8" F2 Telescope
USA : bit.ly/3GTUwiU
International : amzn.to/3G4nlbP
Celestron NexYZ 3-Axis Smartphone Adapter
USA : bit.ly/351K2ki
International : amzn.to/3g20wLd
Celestron CGX Mount
USA : bit.ly/3BtPVCF
Lunt40mm Solar Telescope
USA : bit.ly/3sP8KMX
ZWO ASI 174MM (Planetary / Solar Camera)
USA : bit.ly/3uXpEM8
International : amzn.to/3rXqJAj
ZWO ASI 120MM (Guide Camera)
USA : bit.ly/352iBXg
ZWO ASI 1600MM (Deep Space Camera)
USA : bit.ly/3HVtvg1
International : amzn.to/3rXqJAj
Celestron 0.7x reducer for 11" Edge HD
USA : bit.ly/3gTDJSy
Celestron 0.7x reducer for 9.25” Edge HD
USA : bit.ly/3sNyY2o
Celestron 9.25” Edge HD
USA : bit.ly/3LISupw
Canon 6D mkII DSLR
International : amzn.to/2CbiVER
Tokina 16-28mm Lens
International : amzn.to/3fdFJCo
Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L III USM Ultra Wide Angle Zoom Full Frame
International : amzn.to/3G9kjmP
Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM Lens
International : amzn.to/3H9yPfA
Support my alcoholism by getting some Star Stuff stuff MERCH:
/ @dylanodonnell
Dylan’s links
----
KZbin: / dylanodonnell
PATREON : / dylanodonnell
WEB : byronbayobservatory.com.au
FACEBOOK : / dylanodonnell
TWITTER : / erfmufn
INSTAGRAM : / dylan_odonnell_
APPLE MUSIC : apple.co/3Ya2cHM
SPOTIFY : spoti.fi/3Ye8G8w
Intro Music - "Moving the Ocean (Aerologic Edit)" by Blastculture.

[@bartspeet930]

Quick tip: instead of polar align, just slew to the sun, then place the whole setup so that the telescope points at the sun. That's how I do it with a Lunt 50 on a simple HEM15. Really great what these puny telescopes can image. Love it!

[@DylanODonnell]

That’s an approach I hadn’t considered at all .. great thinking !

[@afryhover]

I like your idea, and that does work for short data stacks. But, if you want to track the sun for several hours, it will drift alot. So for an eclipse etc, I just plan to set up a night or two before.

[@keithhanssen7413]

One of my favorite summertime rituals - get out in the heat and get an h-alpha image.

[@JethroXP]

Not sure I'm following? What's your starting point for slewing, and then once slewed to the sun, what are you moving?

[@luboinchina3013]

The same applies to daylight moon observing. Just be sure your tripod is leveled really well.

[@chardies3872]

Awesome work Dylan, thanks for sharing your knowledge.

[@LogansAstro]

Great tutorial and superb image at the end, especially for such a brief imaging session.

[@BadYossa]

Amazing what you can do with such a small set of data and a set up like that. Impressive!

[@ChristianPsencik]

Awesome video man. Your last solar processing video has helped me tons and I’ve learned even more now. Thank you! This Solar maximum has been so awesome to watch!

[@DylanODonnell]

Thanks Christian!

[@afryhover]

Nice job! Well done Dylan 👍👍

[@sgyeolily]

I've just bought a used Lunt50 and this is so useful! Thank you so much for the clear and concise video.

[@DylanODonnell]

Hey congrats !

[@sinsolosin]

AS 4x!!! WOW! As usual, Dylan IS MY GOTO (tracked) SOURCE OF FANCY APh NEWS!

[@RichardLaurence]

I saw the dust on the scope and knew you were a monster…

[@jamessydenstricker2342]

Always a good day when we get some star stuff love you

[@DylanODonnell]

Thanks Jimmy!

[@AstroSea4]

So glad I found this channel before the eclipse. gonna take a bunch of pics to prepare. Ez process.

[@michaelward3421]

Excellent how-to!

[@DylanODonnell]

Thx Michael!

[@AstroDenny]

I really need to invest in some solar gear. Very cool video and a great final image!

[@DylanODonnell]

Worth it this year!

[@outdegree]

To get rid of the uneven “ghosting” on the Sun’s disk that you mentioned (I believe this is due to imperfections of Ha etalon filter) you can take flats for calibration. Either defocus the Sun or get a special diffusion glass you put in front of the scope.

[@joakimastro]

Congrats with the Ha scope. I got a Daystar Scout this summer. Allready designed a 3d printable adapter to take its quark and put it on another scope, something Daystar DOES NOT CONDONE lol

[@fazergazer]

Awesome technique 🎉

[@DylanODonnell]

Thx!

[@ronm6585]

Thanks for sharing.

[@user-lt9py2pu6u]

Great info Dylan. I use more or less the same set up ( I use a Lunt 50 ) I do have problems with tilt, and the focuser can be a bit tricky as can the pressure tuner but generally it gives great results. Currently thinking of fitting an auto focuser of some kind to enable remote focusing.

[@DylanODonnell]

Thanks Kevin Rudd!

[@shreyaskanetkar4697]

Yessss this is the video I needed before I placed my order. The only difference being I’m going for double stacked! Just curious will y’all vote for getting an eyepiece from Lunt as well? Cuz I’m mainly gonna do imaging!

[@BS1_Industries]

Video length is 13:37. Yep! 👍🏻

[@miahoover9225]

I have a Lunt 40mm also. Its a nice little scope.

[@Wombatzone31]

sort this wrong shed being delivered issue for my observatory and will have Sunny Coast Observatory up and running doing some solar imaging and planetry and uploading using the DeTeCT program for impacts on jupiter! ..... hope the skies stay clear enough for the next 2 months for me to get some Orion subs with the new kit! Love your work as always! Also can use a 360 degree protractor with a nail and string. Set sun position on 360 degree protractor, then get shaddow of sun from nail on edge of protractor to center of protractor..... 0 degrees is north on the protractor. Helpful for folks with a lot of metal disrupting your compass

[@DylanODonnell]

Congrats you must be excited !

[@dominickzaucha]

You can use a left over cereal bag to take flats. You can get as fancy as you want with this, but a rubberband to keep it in place is just fine. The plastic material will diffuse the light, and provide you with a much more even surface illumination. A question from my end, is there any advantage to doing two layers instead of just bringing out the contrast from a single shot?

[@kevinburke8608]

I think it's the tilt of the filter plates that creates a slight gradient. It's a natural result of the filter. I'm about to go out and image the sun today.... clear blue here and about to be clear of the trees and I saw your vid so had to watch. I'll have to do one of these images. Going to try to do a time lapse for the first time...

[@DylanODonnell]

Thanks and good luck today!

[@brrav_]

Awesome! Meshuggah approves. EDIT: Last time I took a pic of the sun (filter on of course) It was all solid white, except for that one of those sun spots. That was about a year ago. Saving for a Lunt atm.

[@DylanODonnell]

Bleeeeeeeeed dagadagadagadagabrrrrrrrrdagadagadagadagabrrrrrrrrp

[@damienk2372]

"Countdown to the Moneyshot" ? Lucky KZbin haven pulled this one yet..........👌

[@blobrana8515]

I can use a 100 mm achromatic refractor with a green filter and solar filter to take reasonable images. Lucky imaging or best 6% of black and white images from videocapture with a Philips vesta webcam. Images captured in capsharp and stacked in autostack and processed in jasc photoshop.

[@astroslap]

You can enable autoguiding in firecapture to track a sun feature. Works if you are able to connect laptop to mount. Just beware you might have to invert an axis.

[@DylanODonnell]

I do that with planets, yep!

[@ryanmichaelhaley]

Meanwhile, I bought a heater for my garage for when I am doing astro. It's so interesting to see how our seasons are completely flipped, thanks to the collision from the moon some 3.8 billion years ago. The results on this were great, tempted to get a lunt at some point. Better than a cheap solar filter.

[@DylanODonnell]

Yeh heaps better! Night and Day. Or day, and day-er.

[@Mrpaulgs]

At 50 degrees north I will definitely do this when I can see the sun again. Great video. Dumb question, could you use Graxpert to help with the Vignetting?

[@jamesdougan8789]

g`day dylan have you not been posting to youtube?? i haven't seen you in my notifications for a long time. good to see you back mate great video cheers ......merry xmas to you and your family

[@DylanODonnell]

I’ve been posting every couple weeks .. which I think is ok for me .. but there’s more on the way I promise!

[@PaulStewartNZ]

A bit of drift is good. It helps to remove hot pixels and dust motes when stacking.

[@DylanODonnell]

True!

[@PetraKann]

What are the 3 most important discoveries you've made using your astronomical equipment?

[@markoezefeld199]

You are showing how to turn a disc of light into a fake sphere. Good job 😁

[@DylanODonnell]

That’s why nasa pays me the big bucks. Gotta keep these fools in the dark.

[@RobotSnake]

@@DylanODonnellPerfect response to a complete moron. You know he is babbling to people in his facebook groups that "I've had people straight up admit they get paid by nasa to make fake astrophotography images!" hahaha I get my checks too man. Isn't it great! We then spend it on more fake equipment to make even more convincing fake photos!

[@BrandonJEvansPhotography]

Sometimes I do the composite but often times I'll just select the sun as an object, invert the selection, then increase the shadow exposure since, as you mentioned, the prominences are kind of already visible.

[@DylanODonnell]

Yeh the image on my Insta of the sun recently was the day before this video and there’s an even fainter flare remnant which I think is harder to pull out without doing the high gain thing.

[@katiepaine]

Can I use an SVBONY Telescope Filter H-Alpha 7nm (for deep sky photos) on the Sun to capture some surface details? Would I use it in conjunction with a regular Baader AstroSolar film filter, or on it's own?

[@TheAntibozo]

"human puny brains" lol. Wasn't really clear to me why IMGPP's tone curves and sharpening are superior to those in Photoshop. Anyway, very nice result! 🐿🐿🐿

[@BSm2919]

I wish my budget allowed for some 500 rule equipment!

[@JethroXP]

Great video, and very timely! I'm looking to put together a similar setup, my big question is which camera to pair with LS40THa. I keep hearing high FPS is better, and I see that you hit about 97FPS, but looking at the specs for your camera, it's only capable of doing that in 8Bit mode. Is that what you used? I assumed you'd want to use the highest bit depth available? I'm currently considering the ASI174MM, ASI432MM, Apollo-M Mini, and this QHY-5III200M.

[@DylanODonnell]

I’ve used the 174mm and it’s good but I’m enjoying the upgrade to to 200m .. use the Bintel calculator to check sampling for your scope choice. 8 bit is fine because with such a large number of frames you output to 16 bit in the stack and it gains the dynamic range through the large dataset anyway. I get 100fps on the 16 bit mode with a smaller region selection too for planets, so the option is always there.

[@nickverstand]

Hi Dylan, could you explain in broad terms what the difference if between this scope and a 'normal' OTA with a solar filter on it? love your videos!

[@DylanODonnell]

Oh it’s like night and day. A regular solar “white light” filter will reveal sun spots but none of the solar surface texture and outer details are true HA solar scope will.

[@nickverstand]

@@DylanODonnell damn now I'll have to buy yet another telescope ;)

[@zaphus]

Awesome in the simplicity! Has ImPPG replaced Registax for you for wavelets/deconv on planetary and solar?

[@DylanODonnell]

I like registax for planets and imppg for solar :)

[@roshaannadeem4913]

Great image! BTW I photographed the same view of the sun and was quite intrigued by that prominence at 2 o' clock so i was wondering if you've ever determined the size of such a prominence, if yes then what method did you use?

[@DylanODonnell]

You could just measure across the disc with the known size of the sun then measure pixels from there. NASA had a great image of that particulate flare / prom. It was a doozy!

[@roshaannadeem4913]

Thank you! It’s crazy what’s happening out there

[@achebwahs1111]

Would me nice to luck an M class flare or even a rarer X class flare in the 45 seconds for some added sparkle. I know it's variable but how long would an average flare event last if viewed through the Lunt?

[@DylanODonnell]

No idea of the top of my head but ongoing videos and animation also reveal a whole lot.

[@achebwahs1111]

@@DylanODonnell I'd imagine so. Very cool image and very tempted to get a solar scope after watching

[@M42-Orion-Nebula]

Dylan, I'm too lazy to buy one of those solar finderscopes. I'm going to just use my normal 8x finderscope to find the Sun easily, wish me luck!

[@DylanODonnell]

Haha thankfully the solar finder comes with that scope preinstalled 😆

[@harrythemartian]

Literally just tried solar imaging yesterday for the first time with my new PST. Turned out terrible though 😂 Any tips for shooting with a colour cam anyone? (ASI120MC)

[@DylanODonnell]

Yes, don’t :) the only colour that is coming through your scope is red. And your colour camera only has 1 red pixel for every 4 (the others are green and blue) so they’re doing nothing. They probably look like gaps in your image if you zoom in.

[@timcorso6337]

V interesting. The corona looks a bit uneven, did you align the images properly?

[@DylanODonnell]

Probably not .. it was all very quick hah

[@BrandonJEvansPhotography]

Wait...when did Autostakkert update???

[@DylanODonnell]

It’s beta .. the file browser seems to be the biggest new feature .. the detect integration is still broken for now but more improvements coming :)

[@user-ob3mx7vl7k]

Gday, dyla'oone'baro'babserwa'ry here XDD

[@gregmckay666]

Dylan, Fantastic image and as always I love your videos. But I do have one comment and I may very well be completely wrong and you may be right, but I think your explanation of the Quality Graph and Frame percentage to stack info is inaccurate. At 03:38 you explain that you move the green bar slider to around the 25% mark and then select 50% to stack, giving you only the best 12.5%. I don't believe that is correct. I think if you want the best 12.5% to stack then that is the # to type into the box, not 50%. The green slider just lets you visualize the quality of the individual frames because as you move that slider from left to right, the image in the other window updates to show you the frames from best to worst. I believe your stacks are the best 50% of all frames, not 12.5%. Which just shows how good your original data is. If I'm wrong, please let me know.

[@DylanODonnell]

I think you're right .. *if* you just click .. that does nothing.. but.. if you alt-click and have the advanced option selected - "Discard worst global frames" then it will also cull everything past the green line. Emil says in the forums when questioned about it that generally (without us knowing) AutoStakkert already defaults to ditching the worst 1% ... so he just made the option to globally ignore a higher threshold if you want. I've never used it before so not sure if it's specific to this new AS!4 beta. I could be wrong too! Link -> groups.io/g/autostakkert/topic/discarding_worst_global/52445587?p=,,,20,0,0,0::recentpostdate/sticky,,,20,2,60,52445587,previd=1491514824000000000,nextid=1484339956000000000&previd=1491514824000000000&nextid=1484339956000000000

[@gregmckay666]

@@DylanODonnell I'll have to look into that. I wasn't aware of the Alt-click behavior. Thanks!

[@drunk_astronomy]

Dylan, this is Drunk speaking to you from six days in the future. Just wondering if you had any plans to come stateside for the eclipse? kind of a tall ask obviously, but it should be pretty wicked.

[@DylanODonnell]

Bucket list stuff!

[@craiglowery4427]

Very cool video. Do you use IMPPG in your planetary imaging workflow

[@DylanODonnell]

Sometimes, but I prefer registax wavelets for planets and imppg for solar generally

[@oocoder]

I said to my wife Dylan O’Donnell has a Lunt 40, can I have one too. She smacked me around the ears and said get on with your jobs!!!

[@DylanODonnell]

Tell her I said you should get one.

[@oocoder]

@@DylanODonnell I told a lie, she didn’t smack me around the ears, she said buy a Lab coat and get on with it. Their cheaper.

[@prnzssLuna]

I could take this picture if solar scopes weren't so darn expensive. Even that tiny Lunt is almost 1300€ q.q Awsome image though. I'll get one of those scopes eventually c: It's been eiter foggy or cloudy for the last 3 weeks anyways lmao during the 5h of sunlight I get

[@DylanODonnell]

You totally could. And yeh the recent price rises have seen the price of scopes DOUBLE. It's been crazy.

[@JoshG-ck7yp]

Fly on deez nuts

[@DylanODonnell]

Well that's way better than "first"

[@DianeKluz]

Have you taken any pictures lately? For some reason I can’t take any lately. Rumours of an artificial sun. I would love to hear your opinion.

[@DylanODonnell]

Yes, got a quick shot of the sunspot causing all the aurora in the latest video. Terrible weather generally though.

[@johnjewell219]

👏👍😎🐈‍⬛🇦🇺

[@SystemCrasher113]

So..... it's a fake image

[@gubigm]

Am I the only one who is bothered by the white sunspots?

[@rickpaul9858]

Nice video, but friends don’t let friends use Photoshop. As a retired professional photographer I don’t believe in having my images held hostage by subscription based software.

[@derekderek2570]

What software do you recommend?

[@rickpaul9858]

@@derekderek2570 for Astro photos? GIMP is more than enough and free

[@Fractalite]

Everything is going subscription based. Its a way to help stop piracy and also helps get a lot of people into high end software. Open source or free tools are there for sure.

[@DylanODonnell]

I’m not retired so I have a license for work. It pains me also though.

[@h4zz4dous]

​@@derekderek2570 GIMP is a good free image editor

[@gee6607]

Slowdown...I learned nothing

[@markoezefeld199]

Why's the sun being referred to as a disc? I have been having issues with that wording because you appear to be more of a globalist than a discworlder.

[@directorofcats3283]

Wearing a white doctor gown is not making u any smarter dude... If you want to have a phd, do what I did, learn!

[@DylanODonnell]

I have a masters so call me master.

[@ronm6585]

Thanks for sharing.