Testing Full Disk Solar Imaging Telescope

I've been working on putting together a very small telescope for capturing the full disk of the sun in the Hydrogen alpha wavelength.  Actually, I've been working on two different solar astronomy projects.  This project should not be confused with building a spectroheliograph which is another project I am working on at the moment.  That spectroheliograph project is much more complex than this one.  I'm still waiting on the optical parts to arrive from France for that project.  In the meantime, I came up with an idea that I had written about here but it wasn't until this morning that I was able to get outside in the sun to test this new setup.

When I put together this surprisingly tiny telescope (it is really a small 50mm guide scope), I wasn't sure of the spacing required to get everything to come to focus.  I wasn't even completely sure whether I would have success in capturing the full disk of the sun.  It was possible that I would still be too magnified and only capture a portion of the sun.  I was fairly certain that I would capture the full disk but I needed to test my configuration and get the spacing just right between components. 

It turns out that I was indeed capturing the full disk of the sun but I had too much spacing in my initial setup that I had previously written about in the blog entry linked above.  I couldn't get the sun to come to focus with a longer extension tube between the scope and the Quark filter.  I removed the long extension tube I was using and simply inserted the nosepiece of the Quark Chromosphere filter directly into my scope and that worked.  Now I know the correct spacing so I can again go back to using extension tubes but I now know the exact shorter length of extension tube that I need when I configure it again.

Once I got the spacing just right this morning, I focused it as best as I could and then plugged my Quark filter into a power source.  If I couldn't focus, there was no sense having the power connected because I would need to take things apart again so I held off adding a power supply to keep things as simple as possible.  

Once I did connect my Quark filter to power, I had to wait 10 minutes for the filter to warm up.  Once it warmed up, then I needed to find the correct tuning.  Each time I turn the tuning knob to a new position, I need to wait 10 minutes for the Quark to adjust the temperature.  If the tuning still is not right, then I need to turn the knob to a different position and wait the 10 minutes for it to warm up again.  Tuning required about 30 minutes this morning which isn't bad.  

Although the sky was mostly white this morning due to wildfire smoke, I managed to capture a decent image of the sun.  This photo, below, is my quick shot of the sun from our backyard this morning.  I compiled this image using only the best 12% of 100 video frames that I captured in a few short seconds.  The sky conditions were so poor that my software indicated that even these best 12% of frames were below 25% in quality.  That is some pretty poor seeing conditions!

This next photo is a comparison photo captured by the National Solar Observatory in El Teide, Spain.  Even though my sky conditions were rather poor, my image is very much comparable to the National Solar Observatory image which is quite an impressive feat.  My image has a bit more contrast but the detail is matched surprisingly evenly between the two images which means I must have done something right!

Note:  My image, above, was captured about an hour before the image, below, was captured at the National Solar Observatory so there will be some differences anyway.  The sun is very dynamic and always changing.

The photo below shows the tiny 50mm guide scope I used for this full disk solar image.  This tiny little scope is pretty impressive!  I was using my manual telescope mount so I was tracking the sun manually by turning one of those big knobs near the bottom of the photo...

This photo below shows my laptop computer's screen while attempting to image the sun out in the bright sunlight.  I placed my laptop inside a cardboard box that I painted black and, as you can see in the photo, I still have all sorts of reflections making it difficult to see the screen.  Without the cardboard box, it is impossible to see the laptop's screen.  This computer screen visibility issue really compounds the complexity and difficulty in capturing sharp images of the sun.

I'm pretty happy with how this little project turned out.  It seems to be producing some really nice, highly-detailed images.  Now, if we could just get rid of all the Canadian wildfire smoke, I could do some serious imaging!