Scattered Thoughts . . .

I am all set up to do some solar imaging but I am now waiting for the sun to clear the trees.  This time of year, the sun travels very low across the sky so I only have a relatively short window of opportunity to observe or view the sun.   I plan to start with some white light observing and imaging of the sun's photosphere.  My solar wedge solar filter includes a Continuum filter as well as the usual IR/UV Cut, Neutral Density and Polarizing filters which has always worked fairly well for me.  I've observed and imaged this way before so there is nothing new with this configuration.  I plan to do something new today too though.  I now have a narrowband 3nm Calcium K filter inside a different solar wedge filter that I have yet to try so that will be part of today's plan.  This should produce nicer results.   The one "different" thing about this filter is that this Calcium K filter is not an observing filter.  Actually, my eyes should see nothing through this filter.

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

I recently picked up a relatively inexpensive larger telescope to help improve my views of the sun.  I say "relatively inexpensive" because a little, cheap camera lens would cost more than this telescope cost.  This new telescope is significantly larger than my previous "large" telescope which should help to see more detail on the surface of the sun...  when and if the skies here ever allow for crisper viewing! Although this telescope is larger, the optical glass in the telescope is not nearly as good as the glass in my other telescopes.  For relatively narrowband viewing of the sun, however, this should not matter.  Since the glass in this telescope isn't "perfect" (to simplify things), it is considered more of a low-end telescope.   When this telescope arrived, I needed to replace the stock focuser.  Most low-end telescopes only come with a single speed focuser, however, it is far easier to focus fine detail when you have a dual speed focuser.