The Sun 13-7-08 7.33 UT

Cloudless blue sky here at 7.33 UT. An hour later cloud had rolled in from the west and the rest of the day looked like it would remain that way. The sun was not as active as yesterday but the main hedgerow prom from last night is still there in the south. Some small proms on the east limb including an arch prom. Nothing happening on the surface otherwise. In the afternoon the clouds parted and it cleared up nicely so I got my new DMK 21AU04.AS USB video camera out to trial it on the PST via the 2X Celestron Ultima Barlow lens.

For the price you cannot beat the DMK at the moment. The equivalent Skynyx 2-0 mono costs £500 compared to £264 for the DMK. The only real difference is the Skynyx has 12 bit mode also while the DMK is limited to 8 bit so the Skynyx can soak up a bit more information giving marginally better resolution in the same 640x480 image (at least I think thats how it works out). The IC Capture software with the DMK is a doddle to use and it is great fun being able to watch the sun in realtime video playback (quite addictive in fact) and capture single shots at the same time. I was shooting video at 60 fps today on an old 1.5 Ghz Toshiba Tecra M2 laptop with 1.25 Gigs RAM and there were no hiccups in the data capture at all. 1000 frames took about 17 secs and the file size was 293mb. Bear in mind this was my first day using the camera and I think I got the focus off a bit so the images can definately go sharper than the ones I have posted below, plus I would probably take a lot more frames to stack ie. 2000 plus. I am definately sold on the DMK USB cameras and would recommend them to anyone, just avoid the firewire ones unless you like a lot of hassle sorting out suitable power sources.

7.33 UT

Late afternoon........

Following two shots are "first light" for the DMK camera. First prominence image is turned negative then coloured from 1000 frames. Second surface filament image is a single shot with no other processing other than false colour...................