Friday, April 26, 2024

Large aperture white light sun

Time to experiment with my 8" mighty SCT!

First of all, the semi-permanent pier is fantastic.  Much faster setup, no need to do any alignment, rock solid for imaging, I'm loving it!


Mounted and balanced on DEC, goto the Sun with 2000mm of focal length from zero position.  It was very close, I could centre the sun without problem.  Sync'ed the mount and then it tracked for more than half an hour, still dead centre.

No problem with manual focusing, rock solid.  The heavy wooden board below was not an issue at all, maybe it helps on stabilising any vibration too.

Seeing less than desirable with cloud running really fast, so just a test shot.

The sun is really busy these days, with loads of sunspots here and there.  This group was close to the centre.  During moments of good seeing, the visual view is simply stunning with loads of detail inside that bigger sunspot.

I'm going to use this rig for planet imaging at night, when condition allows.

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