Friday 2 September 2011

Spotty Sun - 1st September

wl full disk by Mark Townley
wl full disk, a photo by Mark Townley on Flickr.

This has got to be the spottiest sun i've been able to observe in sometime. This image was taken with the 70mm frac at f12, Lunt Solar Wedge, DMK31 and 705nm TiO filter. Despite the poor seeing conditions - the solar disk was boiling away in the eyepeice, the long wavelength and narrow bandpass of the TiO filter cut through the turbulent atmosphere and the image was rock steady on the laptop screen. The TiO filter is worthy addition to any white light observers arsenal, used with a solar wedge and refractor the views are excellent. The filter can be purchased from Omega Optical via EBay http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Optical-Interference-Filter-705BP10-25mm-Infrared-Astro-/150612232231?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2311304827