solar images

[Derivious (Tyrone)]

I am curious as to how to take images of the sun, i know there is probably a lot of stuff filters etc but i noticed you can get covers for the telescope opening and am curious if they work or what sort of image you may see. any advice would be awesome.

[Retrograde (Pete)]

Hi Tyrone,

most telescopes use solar filters over the front objective/aperture to block 99%+ of the sunlight (& heat) entering the telescope letting through just a tiny percentage of the sunlight which can then be safely viewed/photographed.

**Note** - Never look at the Sun through a telescope without proper, un-damaged filters in place. Although they are seldom found nowadays also avoid "eyepiece Sun-filters" as they are prone to heat up and crack which could result in permanent eye-damage if it happened at the wrong time.
(Sorry you probably know all this already but it bears repeating for safety reasons.)

There are also more specialized solar devices such as Herschel wedges, H-alpha filters and even dedicated solar telescopes which allow various solar phenomena to be viewed and photographed. Large aperture telescopes often use aperture masks with small filter sections in them to reduce the amount of sunlight entering the scope.