Scattered Thoughts . . .

I was evaluating a new solar filter on two separate mornings over the past week.  The views weren't as good as they could be.  These views were brighter than necessary and my research was indicating that reducing the aperture of the telescope might produce better results.  In particular, I was hoping to find a way to see more detail on the surface of the sun's chromosphere.  I always have some scrap lumber lying around so I went looking for a small scrap of 1/4" plywood.  I could cut a hole of the correct size and then cut out the outside diameter.  This would then fit inside the dew shield on my telescope.  The inside hole would provide the new, smaller aperture for the telescope. In this case, my intention was to cut a 60mm hole.  Unfortunately, the drill bit walked a bit when cutting so I screwed up the hole slightly.  Fortunately, I managed to salvage the project by making the hole a 63mm diameter hole instead.  This would change my f5.8 telescope to an f6.67 telescop

Back a year or so ago, I built a wood frame solar filter for one of my larger telescopes and, if interested, you can  read about it here.   This is another blog entry about a new homemade solar filter that I made about a month ago to be used, mostly, for testing purposes but it never hurts to have multiple ways to view the sky, daytime or nighttime.   I decided to build this solar filter for two reasons.... 1) I already had the supplies so it wouldn't cost me anything, and, 2) I want to compare one of my Spectrum glass solar filters to this new solar film filter I made as well as compare it to my solar wedge as a comparison between the three types of solar filters.   To make this comparison as accurate as possible and to keep as many scientific controls as possible in this little test, I decided that I should use the same telescope and the same camera so the only significant variable in this test would be the filter itself.  My small Skywatcher ED 72mm refractor was the best option