Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun.
But Mama, that's where the fun is.
My solar telescope arrived today, and after a little bit of set-up I was able to get an amazing view. In operation it's similar but different from a night sky telescope. Focusing is not that big of a deal. It's the Sun, so it's 93,000,000 miles away, give or take. And it's about 900,000 miles across, so unlike other stars it's easy to see even way out of focus. Finding it and getting the edge sharp took a minute or so. Tuning the etalon filter to compensate for the Doppler shift of the Sun's rotation takes more finesse than the focus. But in a few minutes I could see a couple of prominences on the edge, a couple small sunspots, what I later realized was a truly massive prominence right on the face of the sun, and a lot of subtle texture. The longer I looked the more detail I could pick out. I briefly tried installing the second etalon but tuning them both together was wasting time and the sun was just about to set, so I took it back off and just did some more staring at it. I was able to get a few crappy photos just by putting my cell phone up to the eyepiece. Nothing really amazing, but far from atrocious considering it's the first solar photography I did, with an instrument I only had for half an hour, and taken with a phone and no camera mount.
This one shows some of the bigger prominences. The first one I saw was the little one at about 5 o'clock, but after a little more tuning I got the Doppler shift better and saw the amazing three-looped one a bit above 9 o'clock.
This one shows more surface detail, and also why a cell phone is not ideal for this. The dark stripe that looks like a minute hand pointing to nine is the massive prominence extending about 300,000 miles across the surface.
How big the sun really is was brought to a point as it began to sink behind the mountain. As its edge passed behind a tree, the shadows of the leaves were about the same size as the sunspots. I was seeing "tiny" details on something 93,000,000 miles away with a telescope that has little more magnification than a pair of sports binoculars. Nothing on it is tiny.
I need a better mount than the mini tripod I'm using now, and I need to get a good eyepiece camera.
Oh, and Happy Bastille Day.
My solar telescope arrived today, and after a little bit of set-up I was able to get an amazing view. In operation it's similar but different from a night sky telescope. Focusing is not that big of a deal. It's the Sun, so it's 93,000,000 miles away, give or take. And it's about 900,000 miles across, so unlike other stars it's easy to see even way out of focus. Finding it and getting the edge sharp took a minute or so. Tuning the etalon filter to compensate for the Doppler shift of the Sun's rotation takes more finesse than the focus. But in a few minutes I could see a couple of prominences on the edge, a couple small sunspots, what I later realized was a truly massive prominence right on the face of the sun, and a lot of subtle texture. The longer I looked the more detail I could pick out. I briefly tried installing the second etalon but tuning them both together was wasting time and the sun was just about to set, so I took it back off and just did some more staring at it. I was able to get a few crappy photos just by putting my cell phone up to the eyepiece. Nothing really amazing, but far from atrocious considering it's the first solar photography I did, with an instrument I only had for half an hour, and taken with a phone and no camera mount.
This one shows some of the bigger prominences. The first one I saw was the little one at about 5 o'clock, but after a little more tuning I got the Doppler shift better and saw the amazing three-looped one a bit above 9 o'clock.
This one shows more surface detail, and also why a cell phone is not ideal for this. The dark stripe that looks like a minute hand pointing to nine is the massive prominence extending about 300,000 miles across the surface.
How big the sun really is was brought to a point as it began to sink behind the mountain. As its edge passed behind a tree, the shadows of the leaves were about the same size as the sunspots. I was seeing "tiny" details on something 93,000,000 miles away with a telescope that has little more magnification than a pair of sports binoculars. Nothing on it is tiny.
I need a better mount than the mini tripod I'm using now, and I need to get a good eyepiece camera.
Oh, and Happy Bastille Day.