Friday 31 May 2013

CaK Post Flare Prom Lift Off Animation - 31st May


Friday was the last day of our holiday here in South Wales, and all week have been blessed with some really nice clear skies, I have a whole load of images i've not been able to get up on here because of limited internet, but all in good time. I've also been experimenting with how I record and process my CaK images with a view to recording the K2 & K3 layers of the Chromosphere in CaK wavelengths - there was some discussion on Solar Chat about it thanks to Bob Yoesle, and on Cloudy Nights Harald Paleske also made some valuable contribution to a discussion that was running parallel on there. After experimenting this week I came to the conclusion that whilst it is difficult to record it is most certainly possible...

Fast forward to early friday morning; I got up at 6am with a view of trying to obtain some high res CaK images while the air was still cool and the atmosphere still steady. After setting up I checked the GONG website for a quick look as to what was happening, to my surprise there was a prom lifting off around ar11756, a quick check revealed a small C-class flare had happened just over the limb. I pondered whether or not to start off in Ha and go for an animation but decided to stick with CaK. I'm glad I did; I could quite plainly see the prom on the laptop screen. I ran off a couple of images but in just a few minutes I could see the rapid movement so thought would try a CaK animation. Well the good news is it worked; using the 100mm scope at 2000mm focal length with the DMK31 camera I made a 40 frame animation that spans 30 minutes in time.

I know CaK animations on the disk aren't really effective due to the variable seeing, but on this i'm not too bothered about this. If you look carefully you can see the flickering spicule like features which are the K2 K3 layer, but what I am pleased about is how effectively the prom lift off was recorded. Just to clarify, this is a one shot, with the disk and proms recorded in the same exposure.