LS50C Double Stack First Light - 29th March

First light for this new solar setup and the results are very promising!!!

Saturday Sunshine 19th March

The seeing was awful today, but it was nice to get the first run out of the year with the double stack 50 setup and the travelling kit. The sun was nice and busy, and the counterweight mod on the Skywatcher AzGTi has increased load capacity nicely. Gives me some high hopes with the travelling kit for later in the year!

CaK Full Disk 12th March

There was just enough of a break in scudding clouds today to allow a quick fiull disk. A clear airstream meant the chromospheric fringe and proms were quite easily visible. Taken with the LZOS 100/800 stopped down to 50mm to give f16 at the filter.

Solar Overview - 27th February

The last day of the nice weather allowed me to have a bit of an explore on the sun, I was able to get the Coronado DS90 out which was nice!

CaK Single Stack Double Stack Comparison 26th February

Hazy skies for much of the day thinned somewhat in the afternoon on Saturday so I decided to go out in the warming spring sunshine and see what I could see on the sun. Using the 100/800 scope stopped to 50mm to give f16 for the full disks and the difference between single stack and double stack cak is easy to see. I'm using my regular double stack CaK setup, but last year purchased another CaK PST to harvest the magic filter from it with the idea of triple stacking. There is little returns with TS over DS apart from much reduced exposure times so I will stick to DS. Sooooo, I have a single stack CaK filter module in addition now to compare alongside. I think I can improve the single stack further yet, more blocking will help. We can see that the chromospheric network is brighter. At the same time, this network is a bit more fuzzier since we sample a higher level of the chromosphere (compared to the single stack Ca K). The contrast between the penombra and umbra is also lower, for the same reason.