Advice on an imaging setup for the Solar Eclipse 2017

[lrt75914]

Hi guys,

My family and I are planning to visit our friends in South Carolina next year for the solar eclipse. Seeing how this might be a once in a lifetime opportunity I figured I should put some money on the table and buy a proper imaging rig to capture the rare event. One problem I have is that I need to be able to take the whole equipment with me on an airplane, so it needs to be sturdy enough to take a beating and small enough to comply with airline regulations. Another problem is that most of the H Alpha telescopes I have been looking at over the past few days may produce some awe-inspiring images, their price however is way beyond what I would ever pay for a piece of equipment with such limited use. Furthermore, I feel like a solar eclipse does not look all that pleasing in H-Alpha. So, after seeing this amazing image of the 2006 solar eclipse I figured my best corse of action would be to capture the solar eclipse in white light. Given the limitations I have to work with - and the fact that I would probably want to use my dad's SW Star Adventurer as a mount - I came up with the following imaging setup:

- Skywatcher Esprit 80

- Baader Herschel Prism

- Baader ERF

- Zwo ASI 1600 MM-C

Keep in mind that I choose the rather expensive Skywatcher Esprit 80 and Zwo ASI 1600 MM-C because I could also use them for deep sky imaging. Anyway, I would love to hear your thoughts on my setup and whether there are better options out there.  I am not dead set on a white light set up but all the H-Alpha options that I have looked at were either to expensive or to unreliable and therefore not something I would want to use for a solar eclipse.

 

Cheers!

[lrt75914]

After further reading up on the esprit line of telescopes I found out that the Esprit 100 is only marginally longer but almost twice as heavy as the 80 mm variant. Has anyone ever tried to use such a heavy telescope with the Star Adventurer? Do you guys think I could image the sun with such a heavy telescope on a travel mount?