Homemade Solar Flat Caps
O ver the past week, in between bouts of lousy health, I have been working on making two homemade solar flat caps. A flat cap comes in handy when imaging the sun. The flat cap will diffuse the view for images that are called "flat frames". These flat caps are placed over the front end of the telescope, temporarily, to shoot these flat frames. The flat frames are then divided into the stack of normal image frames. A good flat frame will allow me to create even light across the frame (solar filters create mildly uneven light across the frame). It will also help to eliminate any dust specks on the image files. Of course, keeping the camera's sensor clean also eliminates specks and blobs of dust but using a flat frame is another process to effectively smooth out many of these types of defects in the solar image stacks. This little project called for scrounging up various household materials and some hobby tools. I always have some thin styrene on hand and that def