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Polarising filters for solar telescopes


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After many years tinkering with my solar white light and hydrogen alpha set ups, I’d concluded that the only filter that brings out a little extra detail is the Baader continuum in a Herschel wedge. No filter has improved the view in my Ha scopes, including a couple of ND filters I’ve tried - they just darken the image in my experience, though I know some people report better results.
But this afternoon, I was observing the Sun in Ha. Lovely views, as the Sun’s extremely active at the moment. In particular there’s a vast area of swirling activity around three major sunspots. Because I was using fairly low power, the view was reasonably bright, though not excessively so. As an experiment, I thought I’d bung a (Baader single) polarising filter on the eyepiece, wondering why I hadn’t done so before. I was not expecting any improvement, and yet I was surprised to see even more contrast within the active region - it definitely heightened the thin filaments and plasma patterns. I wasn’t turning the eyepiece to vary the brightness - so the incoming light wasn’t polarised. The filter just provided a slightly dimmer and nicer image of the surface features. 
The next experiment would be to try them on binoviewers by attaching a polariser to each eyepiece. The only other place would be to insert the filter before the diagonal and after the blocking filter (marked with blue tape in the attached pic), which I suspect could cause possible vignetting or introduce aberrations(?). 
Now - I know Quark and Herschel wedge owners have used polarisers to good effect, but I wonder if anyone else has used them with a standard Lunt/Coronado/Solarscope telescope and seen any improvement? Maybe I’m late to the party here. But I thought it was worth sharing my experience in case any other members might also benefit.

 

C61F6FF4-DAF3-47AC-B7B0-956F49339AEE.jpeg

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I stack a Baader single polarizing with the continuum filter in my Lunt wedge and it enables me to adjust the brightness by turning the eyepiece. I usually use a MkIV zoom so changing the brightness helps with different magnifications. Never used the ND with the solar wedge, just the moon and venus really. Not stepped into the world of Ha yet, would love to but need to save more pennies first!

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