Thursday 16 October 2008

White light and coloured solar filters

Got some sun early this morning. Nothing visible on the surface, AR1005 seems to have faded from view.
Using the ED80 with the JMB solar filter, this gives a clean white image at about x50. There were hints of surface granulation and texture.
Put some coloured filters in the AE filter wheel to see if any of them made any difference to the view ( in terms of contrast or resolution). Couldn't focus with the TV diagonal! ended up going straight through and found I was at the opposite limit of travel! Needed to ease the eyepiece out by 10mm.
Results:
Yellow#15 , Blue#80a, Red#23a , Red#25 made no real difference
Green#56 - this filter seemed to make the surface granulations and texture more obvious. Worth re-trying when there's a bit more activity.
Also tried:
Meade Series 4000, Narrowband LPR - blueish image but no impact on resolution.
and
Baader 7nm Ha - expected improved contrast, but other than dimming the view, not much better detail seen ( if any!)
So the conclusion was, if working in white light maybe a Green filter may make the surface detail easier to see.

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