Using AstroCrop with Bridge Camera images of the Sun

Using AstroCrop with Bridge Camera images of the Sun

AstroCrop was written by Nicola Mackin a few years ago specifically to precisely crop images of the Sun or Moon from High Optical Zoom Bridge cameras that have been used to capture images using a static tripod where there is unavoidable and sometimes substantial movement between consecutive images.

A Panasonic Lumix DMCFZ72 bridge camera fitted with a Baader solar filter and mounted on a static tripod was used to capture 72 images of the Sun in a hazy sky in bursts of 3. 

Click on an image to get a closer view

A Panasonic Lumix DMCFZ72 bridge camera fitted with a Baader solar filter and mounted on a static tripod

Screenshot showing the captured images in a folder (directory)

These are large images with a lot of wasted black space and would take a long time to stack presuming the computer had enough resources to do the job. 

Because the images were captured manually on a static tripod, there was significant movement between and even within batches of 3 images.

Animation showing the movement of the Sun as captured in the consecutive images

The images were precisely cropped with AstroCrop. This both registered the images and cropped them to a convenient size for stacking and further processing.

All images loaded into AstroCrop, a reference image chosen and a crop area has been placed around the Sun part of the image.

AstroCrop in the process of precisely cropping the solar images

Screenshot showing the cropped images in the destination folder (directory)

The best 65 images were stacked and wavelet processed in Registax 5.1, and post-processed in the Gimp 2.10. Active regions AR2936, AR2939, AR2935 and AR2934 are clearly visible along with some faculae

Final image of the Sun

Uncolourised image

AstroCrop runs on Linux and Windows and can be downloaded from https://www.astrodmx-capture.org.uk  it can be found in the Other Software tab.