Solar Imaging - Which scope and Camera

[johnb]

Hi

I a reasonabel imager but am thinking about investing in a PST and imaging the sun, if I had say a budget of £1000 are there any recommendations as to which scope.

I'm assuming I can use my existing Philips SPC900nc to start with

Regards

John B

[iwatkins]

Hi John,

PST + DMK41 = Nice and easy. Also less than your budget (just).

SPC900nc would be OK to start assuming you can get the sensor close enough to image with. But note that a colour camera will be wasted somewhat as the image is narrowband so green and blue sensors pixels will be wasted/have very little signal.

Ideally, if you go with something like the DMK41 (mono) every pixel is used. (Where is Ken, he explains this stuff much better )

In my setup I use the following bits and stack the resulting video using AS!2:

PST + Nose Piece + Camera

And that gives me a video I stack in AS!2 to give this:

Or a colourised in Photoshop version:

Cheers

Ian

[johnb]

Thanks for that. Would my current guide camera do the trick its a QHY5 or indeed an Atik 314L+ which I can have use off, just think I may then be able to spend more on the PST ?

John B

[riklaunim]

If you have the Atik then you may use it, and if not - the QHY5 if it will handle very short exposures. If they won't focus with their nosepieces then putting a Barlow lens on those nosepieces will help (I use GSO 2x Barlow which lens has a 1,25" filter thread and can be screwed to the nosepiece).

[johnb]

Thanks for this, I have looked for a basic FAQ on Solar Imaging but came up blank, hence all the questions. Is it similar to planet imaging as in take a video and then process ?

John B

[riklaunim]

Yes, it's very similar to planetary imaging, only the image is much brighter

[johnb]

Thanks, next question is the mount, will i need to track or will the videos be short I wont need to worry about that ?

John B

[riklaunim]

It should have some tracking so you could easily collect needed ammount of frames.

[johnb]

Thanks, reading various posts it seems this is popular

MERLIN SYNSCAN™ AZ GOTO COMPUTERISED TABLE-TOP ALT-AZIMUTH MOUNT

Sigh getting expensive already, of course I could just used my EQ6 but I wanted something quick and easy to setup

(thanks for all the help its appreciated)

John B

[riklaunim]

You could piggyback the PST on the EQ6 setup. I re-use HEQ5 for Lunt but I also have an iOptron MiniTower Alt/Az mount for more mobile setups

[johnb]

Lots to think of, last question

Can I use a Bahtinov mask for focusing with the PST or do we focus visually on the screen like I do for say the moon ?

John B

[Merlin66]

The bat mask works for stars - but not our nearest one!

Trial and lots of error!

IMHO the DMK type camera is the way to go.

[johnb]

Hmm it was suggested that I could use the Atik as the camera, in which case I can spend up to £1000 on the solar scope - makes sense to me apart from the fact that solar scopes seem very expensive and should I just stick with the basic Coronado PST

John B

[riklaunim]

If you have one already (like 314L) then you can use it. It will be bit different imaging than with a DMK (you capture like 20-50 FITS and not 1000-2000 frame avi) but it should work quite nicely in standard solar H-alpha imaging.

Here is one of my Lunt 35 mm test images - taken with Atik 314L+ (2 frame mosaic):

[ollypenrice]

That's interesting, Rik. I've tried a number of times to use our Atik 4000 to image in our Lunt FS60 nd it always blooms, even at 1000th of a second. I even tried an ND filter in the line but it still saturated. I suppose the next step would be to try a front aperture mask or maybe a polarizing filter?

You have a good result there. I'd like to get full disk images sometimes.

Olly

[riklaunim]

Overexposure is easy for such DS cams. Insane brightness is needed for 16-bit cams to work best in Solar/Lunar imaging (where short exposure is required), but also most of them don't have those short exposures

For Atik 314L+ and f/6.5 APO ND 3.8 is to bright (even with Solar Continuum if I remember correctly). I had to add light ND filter. Atik 4000 has a KAI so it could be tuned to work with H-alpha or white light by some ND filters. SBIG had an H-alpha solar image made with one of their KAI based cams.