From: Mark Gaffney <markgaffney@me.com>

Date: February 10, 2010 6:10:14 PM MST

To: astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Scorpion Sun Images...

You guys have been busy whilst I`ve been doing this! These Suns are shot with a Scorpion 20SO mono camera using Baader solar film & my C9.25 scope at prime focus. The camera is set to 814 x 618 pixels ROI...I think for the 2nd of these I went to 30 fps, the first one was at 15 fps & using very minimal exposures .90 ms for both, I think. I have to put my lap-top over a bit under a bush & a good few feet from the scope or I can`t see anything because of glare ( we don`t have a useable beach umbrella at present..) so focusing is very difficult (not to mention co-inciding this with getting an acceptable exposure. (thank goodness there were no march flies this time..! -I had some Aeroguard & there were less around-also I remembered to wear a hat but it was still very hot especially by the time I was ready to give up! ). I found a useful expedient was to put a small corner of the solar film (about 1 inch square) over the front of the finder. I spent ages before this trying to simultaneously locate & focus the Sun-using smallest shadow etc.... I don`t know how I`m getting these blotches on the glass cover of the chip..the camera is covered except when I take the grey PGR cover off to test something? I certainly don`t have time when all set up at the scope to be cleaning cameras, especially with the Sun which has a limited time it can be imaged because of the heat! But it`s probably spoiled these images for what they`re worth. Lastly, I`m finding a single sharpest frame seems to be the best option for clarity...& I`m only posting them as small size attachments here.....

Mark