First try with the Wedge

[Philip Benson]

I purchased a 2" Lunt Herschel wedge recently after hearing good reports about them compared to full aperture filters.  I tested it out for the first time with my TMB apo refractor last weekend with clear blue skies Saturday morning.  It felt a bit unsettling aiming a high quality, expensive telescope at the Sun without any form of filtering.  With the ND3 filter and a variable polarizer in the system though the image on my laptop showed the major sunspot complex AR1981/2 very nicely.

The link below takes you to the image obtained which is a combination of two separate frames captured with a Flea3 camera using Firecapture. Then processed in Registax.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30649972@N05/12802714573/sizes/o/

[Merlin66]

Philip,

Very nice - well done!

The granulation is beginning to show - a x2.5 Barlow will give you some spectacular close ups.....

[DrRobin]

Very nice Philip. A superb first solar picture.

Robin

[Luke]

Super shot, Philip   These wedges are amazing devices! I had a cracking view yesterday with the 1.25 Lunt and an ED80.

What's the aperture of your scope?

[Montana]

A stunning result :) a wedge is the only way to go

Alexandra