After imaging and Post-processing the Partial Solar Eclipse of August 1, 2008 I decided to write this Tutorial for later reference by you and me.
Some of the information used in this Tutorial might not be on this page, but can be found on my Solar Eclipse August 1, 2008 page.

Here is the setup I used: note the Sun-and-Moon looking down from the opened roof of my observatory.

Coronado PST with Televue 2.5 Powermate and Vesta SC3 b/w raw webcam mounted on double piggy back platform ; William Optics Zenithstar 80 ED II APO with standard ToUcam Webcam operating with 0.6 Mogg Focal reducer and a stacked Baader Infra Red Blocking Filter/Baader Contrast Booster combo [to get the whole Sun in my FOV] and this whole assembly piggybacked on my Meade LX200 mounted on a wedge and pier.

Imaging the b/w images:
William Optics Zenithstar 80 ED II APO with standard ToUcam Webcam operating with 0.6 Mogg Focal reducer and a stacked Baader Infra Red Blocking Filter/Baader Contrast Booster stacked combo [stacked: to put the 0.6FR at the proper distance from the ToUcam CCD in order to get the whole Sun in my FOV]

43 AVI's [30 seconds @ 10 fps] were captured with the help of the Interval Timer of K3CCDTools:

Camera settings:

During imaging I used the reticles of K3CCDTools to verify that the sun remained nicely centred in the image during the whole imaging session.

Postprocessing of the b/w images:

  1. Aligning and Stacking in Registax in Auto mode, no wavelets were applied; saved as PNGs.
  2. Cropping: via the Batch function of Irfanview, saved as JPGs.
  3. Framing and positioning: in Photoshop I prepared a frame template and used the Grid function in Photoshop to position the Sun where I wanted it to be. As after a while my eyes got weary of the Grid I used Post-It labels on the laptop screen as placeholders.
    4. Per image I also supplied the correct time in UT and each image was save as a PSD.
  4. Through Irfanview Batch I converted the completed PSDs into JPGs and also resized.
  5. The animations were made in K3CCDTools: I loaded the JPGs into K3CCDTools and saved as GIF files (both the full and thumbnail sizes)
  6. For the collage I wrote a simple piece of HTML and with the images nicely lined up on my laptop screen I used screendump [PrtSc] to copy to the Clipboard and Irfanview to paste and store the collage.


August 1, 2008 08:39 - 10:14 UT.
This animation was made from individual images which were loaded into K3CCDTools and then exported as a GIF file.
Click the thumbnail version to view the full size animation (file size 4.6 Mb)

Here is the [size reduced] collage: