Solar telescope for imaging

[telecasterguru]

Thinking of getting solar scope. Coronado or Lunt? 40, 60 or 90mm? Single or duoble stacked? Will be used for imaging. Any suggestions as to what would be a decent camera for this?

I have an ED80, can I get a filter which would give me decent images?

I know nothing about them at all as you can see.

Thanks

Frank

[DavidU]

Frank, I found this page very informative indeed.............
http://www.astro-nut.com/sun.html

[telecasterguru]

Thanks Dave,

I want to get a fair idea of whats available and what it does before I make a decision.

Frank

[DaveM]

Hi Frank. First decide on whether you want a front-mounted filter for your current scope or a dedicated solar scope. One advantage of a front mounted filter is that you will not get a 'sweet spot' like you do with a solar scope with an internal filter, i.e. a central portion of the view that is more 'on-band' and detailed than the rest. This is not much of a problem if you are doing higher magnification imaging though as it is only generally apparent at lower magnifications. If you go the front-mounted filter route, you take advantage of your current scope, and will need to also buy a blocking filter which is incorporated in a diagonal you fit to your scope. If you get a dedicated scope, you have the whole package ready to go when you need it, which is nice.

Regarding aperture, it depends on your budget and interest in solar, but 60 mm seems to be a nice balance between price and performance. You can see the great results Matt Wastell gets from his Lunt scope. The Lunt 80mm dedicated scope and the 90mm Coronado scopes are also awesome choices if you are cashed up. The performance of the Coronado filters seems to be a touch better than the Lunt ones for the same aperture, but the Lunt packages are probably better value for money at normal prices (there is a clearance sale of Coronado gear on at the moment from US stores, but these items are starting to sell out).

For imaging, you don't need to double stack at this stage as you can pull out plenty of detail in the images in processing. If you get a Lunt 60 and want to double stack though, it might be worth waiting for the Lunt 60 mm filter to come out rather than get the current 50mm as you lose a bit of aperture with this. I must say personally I like the look of the Lunt 80 mm scope as the aperture is very generous and Lunt is developing an internal double-stack module that will be cheaper than front-stacking. My advice would be go for the largest aperture you can afford now, and add a double-stack filter later on if you like.

Also be aware that there can be a significant lead time on Lunt products (more than two years for my scope, but generally in the order of months for other products if not in stock at a dealer).

Sorry, no clear recommendation, but whichever way you go, the cost of getting into solar viewing nowadays is so much less than it used to be (though still relatively expensive).

As far as cameras are concerned the DMK series seem to be the best value for money. Go for a monochrome camera rather than colour as hydrogen-alpha light is essentially monochromatic and a colour CCD would not collect images at the resolution of the equivalent monochrome. There are other more expensive options such as a Flea3, but the DMK does a great job for the money.

Hope this is of help. The solar forum on CloudyNights is also a good way to see what the different filters and scopes can do.

David

[telecasterguru]

Dave,
Thanks for all the info, it is most appreciated.

There is a lot of reading to do and a lot of choice but a friend of mine in the US has a Solarmax 40 that he wants to sell and I think this would be a good learning scope so I am going to go for it.

I found an old LPI that I am hoping will hook up successfully to get the imaging going and I am very excited about it.

Thanks again

Frank