Observer Comments

Image Capture Description

This first day after returning from my NYC and Princeton trip was perhaps the best observing day of the entire cycle with fully clear skies and decent seeing. I had time to put out my "best" solar rig, which is my Askar V with the Player One Apollo-M Mini solar camera and a Baader White filter. I used the solar imaging feature in SharpCap to perform real-time wavelet sharpening and "lucky imaging" stacking. There's no doubt that its image is sharper and shows more detail than the Seestar. However, the next day, in fair conditions with lots of high clouds, I found it difficult to set the filters to exclude all of the cloudy images, and the final result was actually worse than my best, single exposure on the Seestar. The Seestar is also much quicker to set up and convenient to bring traveling. Its GUI allows you to wait patiently for the best image to appear and capture a quick series of images to get "lucky" on both the clouds and favorable seeing.

Program Links

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Capture Details & Sunspot Analysis

Observer	MG
Date and Time Observed (UTC)	2025-04-29 13:01:00
Conditions	Sky Quality: Excellent Seeing: 2-Good (1"-2") Clear (<12.5%)
Obs. Lat/Long	42° 17', 073° 57'
Instrument	Seestar S50 f5.0-250mm FL
Camera	Seestar Built-in SONY IMX462 Sensor
Solar Filter Used	Seestar Filter
Post Processing	Levels adjusted in Affinity Photo