The Sun 21 August 2011 white light

[Bizibilder]

Todays Sun with the usual Evostar 120/1000D/SPC900. The seeing was not so good with the image boiling about. Again I had to wait for gaps in the clouds so 2min .avi's (1200 frames) were the order of the day - several of each AR and picked the best to post.

Clever Bizibilder (or is that lazy!) has written his first Photoshop Action today - to sharpen and colour the Solar full disc photos - I got bored with repeating the same "standard" things over and over and taking a couple of minutes to do it, now the action does the whole lot in less than a second, hopefully with more consistant results!

[PH-R]

Great pics and sharp focus, what filter do you use? Thousand oak?

[Bizibilder]

I use Baader solar film in a cardboard holder. (It is constructed to give an aparture of 100mm on the Evostar 120 - ie makes it an f/10 scope). One day I will save up enough pennies to buy a green filter which should help to show the granulation rather better!

[PH-R]

Well I would love to be able to get images like that. Any chance you could write a 'how to' for constructing your filter?

Best wishes,

Paul

[Bizibilder]

I just followed Baader's own instructions:

Baader Planetarium - making of an inexpencive filter cell

However I would add a few notes:

Make sure you use good quality thin card. Also ensure it is "single ply" - I bought some from an artist suppliers and I discovered it was two thin sheets bonded together - all that happened was that it de-laminated as soon as I started to roll it!

Secondly use double sided tape - I tried various glues with no success at all! By the way - use the tape ALL OVER the card, don't skimp on it as if you do the card will soon "seperate" from the layer below.

Third make the tube around your own dew shield BUT put something on it first - maybe a couple of layers of ordinary paper. I didn't and my filter is an extremely good fit! However in use it has started to "rough up" at the edges making it very difficult to slip on and off the scope.

Hope this helps.

PS Because I'm really mean I made the "hole" for my filter 100mm (on a 120mm scope). By this means I can get two filters out of one sheet of film . It also has the effect of making my 120mm Evostar into an f/10 scope rather than f/8.5.