Coronado first light!!!

Hi All,

(I apologize for the cross-posting for those who may have seen this elswhere)

I just processed some of the images from my Coronado SolarMax90/T-Max/BF30 first light. Well almost first light... it arrived Friday amidst the clouds, so while I was able to grab a few quick "wowie-ka-zowie!!!" peeks, there was no time to read the instructions (my eyes... my Gawd, my eyes!!!) or take any snapshots. Ditto on the crummy weather for Saturday, and work held me hostage Sunday until the late afternoon, but....

I did get some visual time in with it (Oooooooh!!!) and managed to snap off a few pic's. There's gonna' be a little bit of a learning curve in approaching surface detail vs prominences... I thought the latter would need longer exposures than the surface, but it seems that just the opposite is true!?! The brighter levels needed to pick up the surface details seem to overwhelm the prom's (during imaging... not visual, where ya' do see it all!!!), which are still quite visible in exposures shortened sufficiently to reduce the surface glare. No biggie... I just have to tweak my approach.

You can view two of the reduced size images at (5" Tak', Nikon CP995, and 9mm Nagler EP):

http://www.astro-nut.com/sun-25-aug-02.html

Catch y'all later,

Paul

Attached Image:

Paul, Saturday PM I was volunteering at the local science center here in Orlando. They have a 10" f/9 refractor on a huge Byers mount, and they had their Daystar Ha filter attached. I think I saw the same prominence as you have photographed. That sure is an awsumb sight through those type scope/filter combo's!

Walt

Hey Paul,

Three questions:

First, why is it yellow instead of red?

Second, If you are up all night shooting the faint fuzzies and spend your days shooting our nearest star, when are you ever going to sleep?

and Third, You own a Mak-Newt, an AP 900 mount, an uncountable number of toys and trinkets for your Nikon Coolpix 995, and now a solar prominence filter, not to mention the money you are spending on ice to cheat your God given dark current count, why haven't you just dropped the bucks for a real astro CCD so you can really make us jealous? You aren't holding out for a $20,000 AP are you?

Screw the Jones's, I can't keep up with the Hyndman's! But is sure fun watching for your posts and wishing. For a while I am going to try to be satisfied with a SAC 7 and my LXD-55 10", but I already wanted a prominence filter and now you are just going to make it worse by posting all these nice images.

Here's to the journey!

Paul McCarl