Post by Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe on Jul 20, 2013 0:02:10 GMT -6
Solar Imaging with H-Alpha and White Light Scopes
19 July 2013
19 July 2013
I have the great opportunity to borrow instruments from the Adler from time to time and we recently got three new H-Alpha telescopes to add to our equipment list. I brought home one of the P.S.T (Personal Solar Telescope) to use over the weekend and do some imaging...
The scope comes in a handsome case and well padded. Comes with a simple Kellner 20mm 1.25" eyepiece and motorized tracking mount. I did not take the mount, as I can use the robust CG-5 with the dual head saddle plate, which held on to the PST scope solidly and securely...
The weather was partly cloudy and very windy, but it was open enough to set-up outside the Chicago Astronomer garage and do some test shots. I popped my own 1.25" eyepieces starting our with a 40mm widefield and going through a 25mm and finally a 17mm...
Visually, solar prominences popped out immediately along the limb, a big one at 10 O'Clock and another at 5.
It's not that easy to do solar imaging, but the Canon Powershot S3 did a decent job for this session...
The is a knurled knob or the "Etalon", along the OTA near the base that allows the observer to "tune-in" the different frequencies of the activities - pending on the distance from the solar disk. Twisting, brought in new features, while diminishing others....
Being partly cloudy, there was a lot of waiting for the culmulus to pass. My neighbor kids stopped by to say hi and take in the views...
I swapped out the PST and set-up the C102mm Refractor for some white light imaging for a comparison...
Of course no prominences, but white light viewing is a equally pleasing....
In this last shot of a successful solar session...I combined H-Alpha with the white light images for a not normally views portrait of our star...
I have this PST scope a bit longer, so let's see how the coming days will work for me....
