A Plethora of Solar Features (and how to make a solar time lapse movie)

Finally the weather cleared and time off work. a high pressure system moved over Southern California, and skies were blue. Here is the first of 2 time lapse movies i made, just click on the image to launch the animation. it may take a minute or two to download.  The movie shows Ar1133 captured  at 1 minute intervals from 1913-2053 UT On 12 December 2010. I used a Lunt 75mm double stacked hydrogen alpha filter on my Tak TSA 102. The clips were 300 frames, with an 8.2 gamma setting. The giff shows several interesting Ha solar features. Quiescent prominences, active region prominences, running penumbral waves, a sub flare with energy traveling along field lines, an emerging flux region, rosettes of spicules outlining super granules, and sadly, Newton’s rings.  a stew of solar features with something for everybody!

AR1133 12 dec 2010 1913-2053 UT-Desktop

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Making solar movies is easy, and results can be pleasing for the solar observer/imager. But you do need a clear sky for a while, and its best to be familiar with your equipment and know how to image with it.  I use two free wares, avistack2 and registax5 to process the data. first I capture 300-400 frames once a minute at 30-60fps and process all the clips in avistack2. i use Lucam recorder to capture the avi clips, and it works great. When i first started to make solar movies i used ic capture  and timed the CCD by watching the seconds hand on the clock and capturing avi files when the hand passed 12. Anyways, I load all the avi files in avistack2 by clicking on the little green film icon on the left of the screen and then selecting all the avi files. Then I click the settings tab at the top of the screen and select processing/all manual. Then i click on the process file tab at the lower left of the screen. i generally go with the default settings until i select a file to save the files in. avistack creates a fits and a jpeg file for each avi, so i select a folder to store the final images in. then the final processing window, I use the histogram to tweak the brightness and the wavelets sliders to sharpen features.

Once I have the jpeg sharpened and adjusted, i save the image and click on the settings tab and select processing/all automatic. Then I click on the batch process tab at the lower left side of the screen. That’s it, avistack2 will take a while to process the files, so get a cup of joe or read Zirins ‘astrophysics of the sun.”

Once avistack2 has created all the individual jpeg images from the avi files, i can align them with registax5. First I open Registax and click the select tab at the upper left of the screen, then select jpeg for file type in the pop up window. I select all the jpegs.  i select 128 or 64 for the alignment box size and leave all  other options at default. Then click on a good alignment area on the image, and then click the align tab (with the green underline) at the upper left of the screen. It will take a few seconds to align,  and when it’s done, move the slider at the bottom of the screen all the way to the right. This will select all the frames.  Then click on the limit tab. then click on the stack tab. at the lower left of the screen, under the create avi tab, check the bmp for image format, and maximum area for image size. Then click on save registered. Registax then saves the aligned jpegs as bmp files. i often load the bmp files several times and realign them to get a nice, smooth alignment, often with a 32 size alignment box. Once the frames are aligned to my liking, I crop them to get rid of their regular black borders that were created from the frame alignment. I will also adjust the brightness and sharpness if needed. I use Corel Paint Shop Pro to do this, but many programs are available that will edit the final image. When all the frames are aligned and cropped, load them into a giff or movie making program. again, many programs to do this are available. I use ap4win to make avi movies, and advanced giff animator to make giffs. If you like watching the sun, give this method a try and you may be surprised at what you capture.