One of the things I am very thankful for is white light solar filters. They are available for purchase for most types of telescopes. The filter can come in various forms, but all fit on the front of the telescope. Any filters that screw into the eyepiece of your scope you should not use for safety reasons.
I ordered my solar filter from Orion when I ordered the telescope. The one I use is made of Baader Solar Film. The film is cut to size and put into a cell and it just pops on to the front of the telescope. It makes for easy viewing of the sun in what is called white light. The white light image of the sun will show you sunspots which you can track across the disk of the sun. The white light image is the same as that as the solar telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, however that is a dedicated solar telescope that uses a projection method. In white light you will not see flares or mass ejections from the Sun. That requires a dedicated telescope that sees in "Hydrogen Alpha." These dedicated telescopes run over 500.00 for a small basic one and top out in the thousands of dollars for a top of the line rig.
I really think white light solar filters should be in every amateur astronomer’s arsenal. You don’t need a large or expensive scope to use one. The filter themselves are pretty cheap too. The one I purchased was about $50.00. A white light solar filter would be a good thing to get for a old small refractor that you may not being using any more OR to take with you for long multiple night star parties so you have something to do during the day. A smaller scope in my opinion would be best for a solar filter just because the seeing is usually not great in the day time... however you don’t have to deal with dew or really cold temperatures either. To me that is a win-win right there.
There is also a Sunspotter pin from the Astronomical League that you can complete.
In short a white light solar filter to me is one of those things everyone should have, it will get you out using your scope more. I know for me it gets me out there pretty much once a week using the scope!
Oh one last thing, I promised a post a month last November. I am sorry I didn't get one out last month. I was under the weather with the flu for a bit last month... so you readers out there (all 3 of you ha ha) will get a second blog post this month!
Issue #610: Ch-ch-ch-changes!
3 weeks ago
I bought a white light solar filter to "expand" my observing opportunities, because here in New York, we can get socked in with clouds for a week or two at a time, especially in "winter", or more to the point from November through March.
ReplyDeleteBut to me, you look at the sunspots for a few seconds, and that's sort of it. It's not like on the moon, where there are craters that you become familiar with, that become old friends. Sunspots are more of a Rorschach test than anything else: just a random pattern, with no real meaning behind it. And if you've seen one random pattern of sunspots . . .
Now, H-alpha observing, that's where it's at! I saw the sun in H-alpha for the first time at last year's NEAF, and I had to bend over to pick my jaw up off the floor. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The sun was ALIVE, the surface was oozing, with flares and prominences jumping off the edges.
But a minimum of $500, and more like $700 or so, to observe just one object? That's a bit steep for my wallet. Maybe when my divorce settlement comes through . . . :-)