Solar help please!!! Never buy from Pulsar Optical

[PH-R]

Greetings,

I ordered a HEQ5 mount from the above company. I received the standard order confirmation email then nothing. I left it a week still nothing I phoned twice no answer and sent three emails no replies.

Anyhow it has worked out well because I have now ordered a second hand EQ6.

Right onto the real topic of my post: -

I want to do solar observing, my set up will be evostar 100ED pro 2, EQ6, Universal Digiscoping Adaptor and my canon G6.

I have a £50 budget for a filter and would like to view as much detail as possible. What are my options?

Kind Regards,

Paul

PS I would love to see any photos of the sun with a similar setup using the recommended filter.

[rusirius]

For a little more (£65) there is the Thousand Oaks filter. For £66 there is the Orion (http://www.scsastro.co.uk/it180004.htm). For less than £50, some outlets do filters made from Baader solar film, for example see these from FLO: http://www.firstlightoptics.com/proddetail.php?prod=AZsolarfilter. Alternatively, you could buy the film and make them yourself.

Either of these options will only give you sunspots. To get more detail you would need a Coronado Solar scope or a Hydrogen Alpha sub Amstrong filter which is very expensive (£700+).

[Tiny]

A good 100mm h-alpha filter costs nearly £8,000!

[Ben Ritchie]

Got to say that the Sun's really boring at the moment in anything other than Hydrogen alpha or Calcium-K, where you can catch some fairly interesting prominences, active regions etc. In white light there are occasional small sunspots - although recently we've had a month without any - but there's not much to see.

Either of these options will only give you sunspots. To get more detail you would need a Coronado scope or a Hydrogen Alpha sub Amstrong filter which is very expensive (£700+).

An in-between step is a Herschel wedge, which (especially with a solar continuum filter) will show the best white-light detail you'll see on sunspots, plus some surface granulation too.

A good 100mm h-alpha filter costs nearly £8,000!

You don't need a 100mm H-alpha filter for a 100mm 'scope, just buy an adapter plate and use a smaller filter...

[PH-R]

Thank you for the swift responses!

£700 -£8000 for a filter does it take twenty trained men to make one?

Has anyone got any pictures taken with either of the budget filters?

KInd Regards,

Paul

NB best place to buy the thousand oaks filter uk?