Scattered Thoughts . . .

I did a little bit more research and testing of the custom spectroheliograph I am building yesterday.  This time I actually captured a single frame of data of one spectral line.  Honestly, I can't even remember which line this was...  Hydrogen alpha?  Sodium?  Continuum?  I honestly don't remember and I suppose it does not matter.  I just wanted to make a little more progress in this project. This image is just one still image of a spectral line captured without the use of a telescope of any sort.  I simply had the spectroheliograph pointed out our living room window.  My purpose was simply to see what a captured image would look like.  For collecting data to compile an actual image of the current sun, I would need to be connected to a telescope and then capture video...  from one end of the spectral line scanning toward and beyond the opposite end of the spectral line.  It would be a completely different process. One thing I did noticed in this image is that either my focus w

I did some more work on the custom spectroheliograph yesterday but I seemed to only make things worse.  It was definitely one of those days!  I had started over with the entire process of assembly in an attempt to eliminate the little problems I was still seeing but I seemed to introduce even bigger problems than the ones I was trying to resolve.   I think part of my problem and the one that was the most time consuming of all the problems was a software problem.  At some point, a red box was moving around on the screen as you can see in the image below.  The box would scroll right...  then left...  then up...  seemingly for absolutely no reason at all.  At first, I was wondering if it was some border around the holographic grating to indicate my alignment was way off.  I swapped cameras and the problem disappeared so I then knew it was not a problem with my instrument.  I then tried the original camera using different software and I had no problems.  At this point I realized that the p

All the parts for the spectroheliograph I am making have arrived from France over the past couple of weeks.  Today is a day of thunderstorms so I decided to start assembling this instrument. The last parts to arrive were the optical parts...  two doublet lens assemblies, a tiny slit, and a holographic grating.  I needed to disassemble the 3D printed parts so I could assemble the entire instrument with the optical parts included.  Of course, I first cleaned up the room and removed as much dust as possible. Once I assembled everything, it was time to connect it to a computer so I could make some tedious fine adjustments and then test everything. The first obstacle to overcome was that the holographic grating was not in line with the rest of the assembly.  I needed to shim this significantly and it is still not right.  I might need to re-shim this part after more testing.   Unfortunately, it is quite dark outside today with dark clouds changing the light significantly within seconds.  I w

L ittle by little, I've been working on building a custom homebuilt, non-commercial spectroheliograph for solar astronomy.  A spectroheliograph is a scientific instrument used for imaging/graphing the sun in one specific wavelength at a time.  It is not an instrument for visual observations though.  It is used to capture any single wavelength between 400-700nm at a very narrow 3 angstroms (0.3nm) in graphical waveform.  Then specialized software is used to transpose that waveform into an image.   This particular spectroheliograph was designed by Christian Buil in France.  He kept this particular design small and relatively simple for do-it-yourself amateur astronomers such as myself.  I believe he also has spectroheliograph designs that are research-grade and costing tens of thousands of dollars.  I opted for the dirt-cheap do-it-yourself and a-little-more-difficult route to build what is considered a beginner spectroheliograph.  It is still a scientific instrument but, in order to