About 60 people came through the Company Seven telescope shop in Laurel on April 28 for the combination National Astronomy Day & Sun-Earth Days sponsored by NASA. I brought my C8 to join a Ranger, TV-85, Leica spotting scope, and Astro-Physics 130mm refractor, all with solar filters for the day's sungazing. Of the five scopes, the middle three had full aperture glass white light filters from Thousand Oaks. The little Leica spotter was fitted with the new Baader Astrosolar film, and there was a surprise for us at the 5" refractor.
The view with the Leica & Baader filter, at the same magnification, surpassed the sharpness in my C8, though I'm trying hard to blame that on the too-large 8" diameter and the fact that my black C8 had been cooking for most of the day by the time I made the comparison. Shop owner Marty Cohen was waiting on a larger shipment of the filter material (which is sold as loose sheets), but it hadn't arrived in time for me to compare with my glass Thousand Oaks.
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Waiting for the sun to...rise!
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All images shot on 35mm transparencies, scanned to disk & enhanced
The Sun photographed through
'eclipse glasses' with a 100mm lens
(false corona caused by filter distortion)
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Prime focus with 8" SCT
and full aperture, white light, glass solar filter,
showing sunspots
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The Ranger was putting up a good fight for the day's sun worshipping, and looked like a great backpack scope. The TV-85, as mentioned before, is a real sweet thing. Very very sharp, and for some reason showed a much more saturated orange color than from the filters on either the Ranger or C8. I was initially a bit disappointed in my C8, though it had been a while since I'd done any solar observing. I compared the same magnification between these scopes as well (both baking for the same time), and was satisfied that the C8 really did deserve to be a much bigger pain in the butt to lug around. Not bad at all.
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Sunhopping with a TV-85
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Setting up the AP130 with H-alpha solar filter
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But nothing got the ooohs, ahhhs, and gasped breaths percolating like what was happening with the 5" Astro-Physics refractor, since Marty had mounted a DayStar Hydrogen-alpha filter to wash prominences over us. I have never before seen this view with my own eyes, and I have to say it is just plain magical.
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The color was a deep red/orange, and after a few seconds, the detail just soaks into your eyes. Massive patterns of turbulent tendrils bubbling up from below, swirling around the plentiful sunspots, and spilling off into space, as seen at the far edges all around the disk. I had neglected to bring a T-adapter for my 35mm SLR, but Marty cracked open his kit bag and turned up with one for my camera. It was a simple adapter with a 2" eyepiece flange on the other end, so you just slip the eyepiece out, slip the camera into the diagonal. Beautiful!
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In Hydrogen-alpha light, showing
prominences & solar flares
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Showing turbulent detail & sunspots
(heavily enhanced images)
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Some of the gang at Company Seven
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Someone also brought one of those new black observing hoods from Orion. It certainly made a difference in the daytime to help keep our pupils open, but the thick dead black cloth was built more for a cool night than a day in the sun. Another guy (sorry I don't have the names) is a photographer and said big camera shops sell similar cloths for view-camera use. The difference is the photo drapes are silver on one side, which might cut down the heat better for solar observing.
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Same flares growing over approx. 90 minutes
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I was disappointed with my H-alpha photos, though, since they don't show anything near the resolution visible by eye. There will always be some loss, of course, but it took a tremendous amount of Photoshop kneeding to see any surface detail at all. I'm told that the flares & surface filaments are mutually exclusive on film, so it's necessary to do some broad exposure bracketing and then combine the images for a fully active disk. Something to look forward to...
Great day, and great fun with the Company Seven gang. Thanks guys! - Jeff Cook
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