Solar Imaging Session - October 6, 2014 (Testing Double Stacked PST-Ha)

The sky this morning is partly clear but seeing condition is poor. I was able to borrow a Coronado SM40 from my good friend and ALP VP Jett Aguilar to connect it to my Coronado PST-Ha. This is mostly referred to as Double Stacked Coronado PST-Ha. Installing the SM40 in front of the Coronado PST-Ha narrows down the Ha bandwidth from the standard 1 Angstrom to around 0.5 Angstrom which should extract more contrast on surface details such as dark filaments and flares. Drawback is considerable dimming of the image. My initial testing this morning draws a conclusion that it indeed improve my Ha wavelength imaging in terms of enhanced surface details! The western huge hedgerow prominence is still visible this morning while the other large prominences visible yesterday has reduced in size a bit. With the double stacked setup, dark filaments are very contrasty as well as the flares specially on AR12178, 12177 and 12181 Sunspot Groups. I hope to be able to do further testing next weekend. I was also able to do some white light imaging as well but due to bad seeing conditions, images are nevertheless still ok.