Solar Visual with APO's

[issdaol]

Had a couple of nice clear days so finally got to test out my Baader Ceramic Hershel Wedge.

Setup my Tak TSA120 on Vixen SXW mount and manually aligned on the sun. This combination is very easy to use as setup time is just a couple of minutes.

Setup time with my TREX would be even better and more flexible but the TOA150 was setup on that for another task at my dark site.

The Baader Hershel Wedge is very simple to use and build quality is first class.

The rear of the Wedge assists in final alignment as the image of the is reflected there allowing for easy manual positioning to centre the sun in the field without needing to use any other solar fingers or other alignment tools.

Left the scope to acclimatise first using the TV31Nagler. The visuals were nice and clear with some nice surface granularisation and a few groups of sun spots visible. There was grouping of 3 very large sunspots just off from the centre of the sun which were immediately obvious.

I spent a couple of hours observing these using various EP's and found that the best views were with my Tak LE30, LE12 and lastly the LE7.5 which provided a beautiful high power view that was almost 3d and clearly showed up the parallel radiating lines on the outer edges of the spots (not sure what these are called??).

Having seen the recent thread on the Daystar adaptor I am now keen to a direct comparison if anyone has one close to Canberra ???!, as it may be worthwhile moving to the Daystar adaptor or having both.

Cheers

[LewisM]

Nice report Phil.

A word of caution using Tak scopes for solar : I have read reports of the Tak black paint internally quite rapidly becoming a greenish tinge with solar use.

I don't do solar observation so cannot report on the veracity of this statement.

[issdaol]

Hi Lewis,

Thanks :-)

I had head of a similar problem with TV scopes used for solar but never this issue with a Tak before :eek:.

Thanks for the heads up. I will keep an eye on it and also see if I can find any other reports of this issue.

Cheers

[Merlin66]

Phil,
I assume your talking about the Daystar Chromo Quark eyepiece...
It would work well on your set-up, just needs a good UV-IR filer as an ERF.
(I have a TV Genesis I use for solar....can you point me to the reference to the paint failure?)

[issdaol]

It was actually a article I read on here a couple of years back. I recall that is mentioned the black linking of some TV scopes coming away from the tube when used for solar and sometimes due to age.

Thanks :-) noted that Daystar recommend a Dewshield mounted ERF. Adds an a fair bit extra to the base price of the Quark but I guess in this configuration it is needed especially to protect diagonals and other optical flatteners/reducers/extenders in the light path.

[Merlin66]

The UV-IR is to minimise the heat build -up in the Quark.
It relies on temperature control to achieve the precise bandwidth.
Sure, there will be secondary benefits......
Hmm, I've never had any concerns/ issues with the Genesis in the past twenty years....

[issdaol]

Hi Ken,

Very interesting! I will need to look a bit deeper at the way the Quark operates.

Regarding the TV issue I can't remember which models it was, all I recall is the mention of the issue and there were a few people mentioning the same concerns.

Cheers