Image of the Sun from earlier today.
Taken with Coronado SM90 filter, TEC140, 0.5x focal reducer and DMK41 camera.
Earth, Moon and their orbiting distance shown to scale relative to the Sun.

www.astroshot.com/Solar/2012/2012-04-21.jpg

Michael

That is a really good image - the pale background does something positive to the overall effect. Not sure what or why but it appeals - maybe it reduces the overall contrast and reduces distraction from the detail - don't know but it works for me.

Your use of Earth and moon orbit as a scale reference is really good - far more informative than the Earth alone as a reference to scale.

I appreciate you posting that.

Mark C.

wow, great image, great colour and contrast. i would be curious to know how close you would have to be to see that much detail? ...5 miles? with factor 1000 sun block? Great picture.

Declan

Great shot, and like the guys above say, the background colour is gentle on the eye, the earth-moon distance scale is a great touch.
I'm getting myself one of these sm90's, don't know where or when, but it is next on my list, awesome piece of kit.!!!

Glad you enjoyed it folks.
The addition of the Moon came about as I was going through the processing of the image with Dave Mc.
We were discussing changes to the scale, such as adding Jupiter etc, when Dave suggested adding the Moon.
We were both quite surprised at how far the Moon is from Earth in the image - I re-did the calcs a couple of times just to be sure!

Having a bright background is something I have used in the my past few images and I think works well.
Much easier for the eye to detect the delicate features of the proms.

Question for folks here:
Does light of a particular wavelength and bandwidth have a particular Pantone colour?

Michael

You might have to expand (elucidate) on that question - I for one, am not sure what it is that you are asking.

Mark C.

H-alpha light is at wavelength of 6563nm.
This is in the red part of the spectrum.
www.astronomyknowhow.com/pics-res/hydrogen-spectra.jpg

I use a monochrome camera to record h-alpha detail.
When I process the image, I add colour to the image.
What I'm wondering is whether there is an exact colour I can add to the image to match the exact colour of the Sun at 6563nm.

only thing is, would it look better?!?, h-alpha is almost a blood red, where as you have a nice sunset orange colour in there, it would be interesting to compare.

Dave_Lillis wrote:

only thing is, would it look better?!?, h-alpha is almost a blood red, where as you have a nice sunset orange colour in there, it would be interesting to compare.

Good point. I don't think it would look any better.
I'm just curious about the science of light & colour and how to represent that on an 8 bit monitor - if that is possible.

I did a bit of a trawl and the best info that I found is

www.midnightkite.com/color.html

There's a link to a FORTRAN source to convert wavelength to RGB.
(gcc compiles FORTRAN).

But that's probably a lot of trouble.

This may be a stupid suggestion (and its cheating avoiding all science and engineering) - but could you examine the RGB of the Sun's H-alpha flares from an existing true-colour solar-eclipse picture?
[or from the spectral lines in above link]

You would have to be sure colour wasn't manipulated though.

Mark C.