Guiding on solar observation?...

[jimao22]

Hi there!

I have a question for who can help on this. I make some solar observations full disk, but the mount is not very accurate (perhaps in the near future we'll change this). But mean while, we are using what we have. Is it possible to make guiding on Sun similar with what we are doing for stars? Or is any other possibility to do that?

What crossed my mind it was to use a low F guider with a focal reducer (to try make the Sun as small as possible), with appropriate filters in the front of the guider and use PHD whith some settings that can allow some guidance. I just ask, I did not tried anything until now.

Thanks in advance!

Cristian

[StevieDvd]

Have a read of the options in SharpCap and FireCapture. Both have an option to do something to help keep the target centred.

In SharpCap see 'Feature Tracking' in the online manual on SharpCap web pages.

CutOut and auto Align features in Firecapture

Not a seperate guide camera but the image capture camera/software is used to send control commands to the mount.

Hopefully, this may help with your imaging.

I don't use this as I use a solarquest  mount for solar which tracks the sun.

 

[newbie alert]

There are a few solar guiders out there but as with everything, nothings cheap.. any mount should be able to keep the sun in the fov, it's a fairly large target..just pointing a gem mount north should keep it in the fov.. polar aligning the night before will keep it on the camera sensor easy enough 

[jimao22]

Just to understand the issue:

The mount is an old ZEISS mount, a huge one, made in 1956. The 3 scopes on it have perhaps more than 70 kg, even more. The exposures are short enough to not be influenced by the poor tracking, but we need to take bunch of them, with some delay between, 60...120 sec. So when you look at the series of shots, you can easily see how Sun is moving. We can align them, but the FOV is very narrow, almost same size as the full disk of the Sun, so sometime the Sun go outside the FOV. Exposures are taken with MaximDL on one computer and KStar on other.  That's why I need a mean to keep all under control.  

[skybadger]

I second the firecap feature alignment and tracking capability.