Quote:
Originally Posted by cosmicap
Hi- I'm very much the novice but would love to photograph this rare event.
Years ago I had a toy refrctor telescope that had a white screen on an adjustable rod that would focus the sun's image from the eyepiece. We now have a (rarely used) Celestron 130mm, F1=650 F5 Newtonian and I am wondering if a similar method could be used. No access to ND filters for direct viewing/photographing, sadly. 'Scuse my ignorance - hope there is some way to record the show.
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Hi Peter,
Yes you can do a similar thing. I finally got around to testing out transit of Venus options with my 130mm Newtonian yesterday morning. I just opened the small aperture in the cap at the end of the optical tube (rather then removing the entire cap), and then projected the image of the sun onto a sheet of white paper in a large black bucket. It's a very crude setup, but I was able to snap an image of the Sun without too much trouble (see attached images). I'll probably use this projection approach to show the children in my son's grade 5 class at school.
Note of course that you have to avoid actually looking into the eyepiece, or you'll suffer permanent eye damage! For this reason I leave the caps on the finder scope.
(And yes, I do need to clean the eyepiece before the transit...!)
Cheers,
Stephen