Sunspots: Quark & ASI178

So this is my first closeup of sun spots with my developing solar setup. Based on when the data was collected, 2024 - April 27, I believe this sunspot grouping is AR3654 and the one on the left side is AR3655. It is not the best solar image as the detail and sharpness could be better but I am happy with it. This summer I plan to do more solar imaging with the setup I built a few years ago. It consists of the Orion ED80, Daystar Quark Chromosphere, and ZWO ASI178. Sharpcap was used for image acquisition while AutoStakkert & IMPPG were used for the main processing although I did a bit of final work in PixInsight and Photoshop. There is some type of artifact on the right that I was able to reduce a bit.


I did collect a series of five videos of a solar flare in an attempt to make a video using batch processing. It worked, however the detail was not good and it was not worth posting. The likely causes for the lack of sharpness are poor 1) seeing conditions, 2) scope not good enough, and/or 3) the camera not good enough. I can't do anything about the weather but the scope I think is fine as I took some lunar images with it recently and was quite satisfied. The ZWO ASI178 is a very good lunar and planetary camera with its small pixel size of 2.4 micrometers and capture speed of 60 fps (10 bit), however, for solar work using a Quark, a faster speed and larger pixel size would be better. I have ordered an ASI174 which has a capture rate between 160 fps (10 bit) and pixel size of 5.86 micrometers. Fortunately, since solar and planetary cameras are not cooled, they are not as pricey as deep sky cameras, relatively speaking. The other thing that could make a higher quality image is doing flats. Doing flats with solar imaging is a bit different than deep sky flats and I have not tried them yet although the method for collecting them looks fairly easy.

Sunspots: Quark & ASI178
Date: 4-28-24
Camera: ZWO ASI178MM-Pro
Telescope: Orion ED80
Barlow: Daystar Quark 4.2x
Focal Length: 600mm (2520mm w/Quark)
F/7.5 (F/31.5 w Quark)
Focal Reducer: none
Mount: Orion Sirius Pro
Filter Adaptor: None
Filter: Camera UV-IR, Ha-Quark
Focuser: None
Autoguiding: None
Exposure: 300 x 4.1910 ms (30% of 1000)
Gain: 200
Offset 0
Temp: 15 C
Processing: SharpCap, AutoStakkert, PixInsight, Photoshop

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