First Solar Watch

[Abernus]

Hi all,

Well as you might of guessed by the title I have finally got my first view of the sun. You might of seen my other thread on looking for advice on solar filters. Well now it all built I got a chnace today as it's a lovely day to head out and look for the 2 sun spots.

Now I don't have a back garden yet ( will have when we sell the house) so I have made the best I can from my current location, and please be gentle as I am new to all of this.

Here is my set up:

This is my telescope with my homebuilt solar filter attached

The solar filter:

And this is the filter in the box my wife made with 2 pairs of solar glasses (makes it so much easier to line the telescope up)

I took a few photos with my Pentax Optio M20 happy snapper cam. There has been no processing done and the quality is not that good.

This is the best shot I could get of the 2 sun spots ( bottom right )

Any advice anyone can give on hope to process these and tips on how to take better photos would be a big help. I do have a Lumix FZ8 and I am buying a universal mount for it.

Thanks for looking.

[daveg]

Welcome to the Sun!

Be careful with focusing. set the camera to landscape mode (you know- the one with the mountain icon) and focus the telescope. Use the edge of the solar disc and get it as sharp as possible. If, like now, there are sun spots you may be able to focus on these too.

Use a site like www.spaceweather.com to see where spots (if any) are so you can be sure you're imaging them.

Then for this type of set-up its trial and error. take many shots at different exposures. If the sun appears white then its over exposed. again when theres spots they should appear on the disc. You should also notice limb darkening. Since the sun is a globe and not a flat disc a correct exp should show the centre slightly brighter than the edge.

when youre happy with exp and focus download it to a program like photoshop and perform a gentle unsharp mask.

Its also good to note down settings that work for you to speed up the process.

This is just a starter try it and feel free to post or PM any more questions.

Dave Gradwell

[Abernus]

Thanks for the info. I am off to my folks house tomorrow and will ne taking my telescope with me. So I will tke as many shots as I can and play about with exposures. I will try to get some processing done on the new shots and post them on this thread.

I can see how this could take a lot of your time and how it can get addictive.

[daveg]

Once you get a bit of practice you'll be fine and yes it is very addictive.

DG