My VERY cheap solar set up

[ikorodu]

Managed to get the first light with my very cheap white light solar set up today.

Its a celestron travel scope (A70mm F400mm) (£42 from ebay) with a home-made Baader solar film filter

Here it is:

Homemade solar filter by ikorodu, on Flickr

The view was fantastic with my seben zoom ep set at 8mm the suns disk just about filled the FOV and sunspots with the slightly lighter areas around them were clearly visible. I'm well pleased!

Here's a picture through the EP. Its pretty poor compared with the crisp view I had but i just got a bit over excited

Sun 280712 by ikorodu, on Flickr

[Ganymede12]

It looks like a mini version of my solar set up!

Try messing around with that image in GIMP2, You'll get brilliant results! Just look at my gallery to see the difference it makes!

[ikorodu]

To be honest the tripod is very poor indeed and made getting any sort of shot a challenge. I have recently acquired a Meade 102mm frac with a DS2000 mount which not entirely stable is light years ahead of the celestron set-up so I'll make a filter for that as well and see if I can get any better images. The travelscope is for my holiday to the ribble valley in late August where I hope for dark skies and sunny days!

ikorodu