The sun is getting much higher in the sky now, and with each passing week the window I have to do solar observing gets larger and larger. I was keen to try out the triple stacked 40mm scope again today in slightly better conditions than of late. This combination really is a killer, visually the views are fantastic, and even with the camera there is little loss of light compared to the double stack setup. The filaments become really three dimensional floating above the suns surface, and plage speckles the whole disk. Taken at 700mm focal length with the PGR Blackfly IMX249 GigE camera.
I tried another configuration with the Lunt 50 etalon I recently bought, and that is triple stacking it with my existing double stacked SM40 etalons. The weather was supposed to be good on saturday, but rapidly thickening cloud meant I had very little time for observing and imaging. I tentatively looked through the eyepiece visually to see whether it would work, tuning the etalons the view was immediately apparent that there was a lot of detail and contrast. I just about managed to get the image above running on maximum exposure and very high gain before the cloud was too thick. I really excited to see how this setup performs in good sky conditions...
A new year, a new solar image and a new scope mod. I tried a Lunt 50C double stack filter in place of my usual SM40 etalon that is used to double stack the basic SM40 scope. I was quite pleased with the result, seemingly giving a result that is centred closer to 656.28nm than my usual setup which seems slightly offset. Given the boiling seeing with todays low sun I was quite pleased with the results.
The seeing was boiling, the sun was low in the sky, but it was my first CaK full disk of the year, and now the sun just keeps getting higher with each passing day! Taken with the 40mm scope at 700mm focal length with the PGR Blackfly IMX249 GigE camera and the homebrew CaK filter.
