Images

Sun.

Imaged at Birch Grove by Andy Welton, a member of the Mansfield and Sutton Astronomical Society using his Starlight Xpress HX516 CCD coupled to the 4" F10 SCT piggy backed on the 10" on the morning of Saturday 7th September 2002.

We originally tried to get the image through the 10", but had a little difficulty with focusing. We think that with such a large image scale the chip was probably imaging just a small area between sunspots giving us nothing to focus on. I tried to remove the Peterson Eyeopener on the visual back so I could fit a focal reducer, but the Eyeopener seemed to be very tight or seized on, so I gave up in fear of stripping some drive gear teeth with the necessary torque. We then decided that an even smaller image scale would be achieved by moving on to the 4" SCT which proved far better for our purposes. In any case the solar filter is designed to fit the 4" SCT, but is fitted in a home made off axis mask to enable its use on the 10".

The image was taken at 5/100ths second using an Orion full aperture glass solar filter and a green filter. Andy carefully processed the image to sharpen it and bring out the finer contrast detail. This was our first attempt at imaging the sun, and we are rather pleased with it. On close examination, limb darkening can be seen and faculae are visible especially between the two larger spots.

< Proposed upgrade at Birch Grove.

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