Full disck 16/12 Daystar

[LucaR]

An incredible miracle happened this week over my garden in north of France: during a couple of hours on 16/12 the sky suddenly turned into blue and some round thing incredibly bright and hot appeared flying on it! I took a picture because otherwise people will never believe me...

(APO 102 f/5 diaphragmed down to 70 f/7.5, barlow telecentric 3x, Daystar Quark chromo combo, ASI2600mm)

[MAURITS]

Beautiful detailed images Luca.

[DeepSolar64]

WoW, that bright round thing is really beautiful. Nicely done!!

[eroel]

Luca:
Beautiful FD.
Best regards and Merry X´mas.
Eric.

[Montana]

Fantastic yes I would like to see a blue patch appear one weekend / day off too, this mysterious hot thing only shows itself on work days

Alexandra

[Radon86]

An incredible miracle happened this week over my garden in north of France: during a couple of hours on 16/12 the sky suddenly turned into blue and some round thing incredibly bright and hot appeared flying on it! I took a picture because otherwise people will never believe me...

(APO 102 f/5 diaphragmed down to 70 f/7.5, barlow telecentric 3x, Daystar Quark chromo combo, ASI2600mm)

Hi Luca,
How do you find the Daystar Quark chromo combo ?
I have the original 4.2x barlow Quark Chromosphere.

Is the combo version more expensive ? Adding the televue x3 is very expensive is it not ?

Thanks.
Magnus

[Radon86]

Hi Luca,

I thought the Daystar Quark combo was designed for F15 telescopes !
Here is a link...
https://www.firstlightoptics.com/daysta ... nence.html

Do you find the x3 barlow/telecentric gives good results ?
Have you tried with a F15 (native) telescope e.g. SCT/Mak/F15 refractors ?

Magnus

[Radon86]

Fantastic yes I would like to see a blue patch appear one weekend / day off too, this mysterious hot thing only shows itself on work days

Alexandra

Hi Alexandra,

You are very lucky to have so much time at weekends to image ! When I was younger and working full time, there was no time (I found at least) for any such astronomy or daytime solar work !! as the work was too intensive/little time for such demanding pursuits !!

Magnus

[LucaR]

I thought the Daystar Quark combo was designed for F15 telescopes !
Here is a link...
https://www.firstlightoptics.com/daysta ... nence.html

Do you find the x3 barlow/telecentric gives good results ?
Have you tried with a F15 (native) telescope e.g. SCT/Mak/F15 refractors ?

Yeah, that's why I have to add a barlow for a bigger F, and a diaphragm for a lower D => resulting on a much higher F/D than what my APO can usually give me.

That's not a very usual way I know, plus my camera 2600mm is not very fit for solar! To be honnest, my whole setup is more of a resourcefulness system than anything else :-) ("system D" as we say in french). I bought this Daystar because I found a good second market deal; I cannot remove my reducer from my APO because it is totally stuck in it so I had to bough a telecentric barlow 3x plus several extension tubes to compensate the focal... At first I used it with a more classical camera in solar photo, the asi178 (mc then mm) - result was very satisfying, but it gave me only a part of the solar disc.

When I bought the 2600mm for my deep sky pictures, I wanted to give it a try on solar, just to see... But for any reason (serendipity!) I involuntarily forgot the extension tube... And the result was unexpectedly stunning! Not only I got the whole disc just fitting in the sensor, but even when I zoomed in the resulting picture it was still better than what I could get before with the 178mm ... The only problem was not enough contrast because not enought F/D. But as I wanted to keep the full disc on the sensor, I decided to lower the D instead of more F, so I diaphragmed with a handmade cardboard having a 70mm diameter hole - and here we are.

Didn't try with another setup, no.

[TareqPhoto]

I thought the Daystar Quark combo was designed for F15 telescopes !
Here is a link...
https://www.firstlightoptics.com/daysta ... nence.html

Do you find the x3 barlow/telecentric gives good results ?
Have you tried with a F15 (native) telescope e.g. SCT/Mak/F15 refractors ?

Yeah, that's why I have to add a barlow for a bigger F, and a diaphragm for a lower D => resulting on a much higher F/D than what my APO can usually give me.

That's not a very usual way I know, plus my camera 2600mm is not very fit for solar! To be honnest, my whole setup is more of a resourcefulness system than anything else :-) ("system D" as we say in french). I bought this Daystar because I found a good second market deal; I cannot remove my reducer from my APO because it is totally stuck in it so I had to bough a telecentric barlow 3x plus several extension tubes to compensate the focal... At first I used it with a more classical camera in solar photo, the asi178 (mc then mm) - result was very satisfying, but it gave me only a part of the solar disc.

When I bought the 2600mm for my deep sky pictures, I wanted to give it a try on solar, just to see... But for any reason (serendipity!) I involuntarily forgot the extension tube... And the result was unexpectedly stunning! Not only I got the whole disc just fitting in the sensor, but even when I zoomed in the resulting picture it was still better than what I could get before with the 178mm ... The only problem was not enough contrast because not enought F/D. But as I wanted to keep the full disc on the sensor, I decided to lower the D instead of more F, so I diaphragmed with a handmade cardboard having a 70mm diameter hole - and here we are.

Didn't try with another setup, no.

Perfect!

I did buy exactly same of this Quark too, the combo version and i didn't try it yet except only once when it was the partial eclipse in October, was big fail, so now i have to know what i have to do to get full disk with telecentric Barlow as most of my scopes are at F/5 or F/6, i am refractors, even if i stop down i can be around F/8-F/10, and that will not give me like a full disc, so i might try your way, i am planning to buy a camera IMX432 due to the pixel size and sensor size compared to ASI174MM i have, but even with your APS-C it was like barely you got full disc at least.

[LucaR]

but even with your APS-C it was like barely you got full disc at least.

To help you estimate, here is my optical path - first a filter drawer with a IR-CUT filter, then some adaptors (what I found...) to be able to plug the telecentric barlow which is just after, then the daysatr, and the camera 2600mm (APS-C) screwed directly to the daystar with another adaptor. All this is screwed direclty on the focale reducer (x0,75) which is stuck in my refractor's focuser. The refractor itself is a 102mm f/7 so with the 0.75 reducer it gives a focal lenth of 535mm (F/5.25) at the entry of the IR-CUT filter. This mount gives me the disc fitting exactly in the APS-C sensor - I only crop a few pixels up and down in my final photos.

Solaire Zwo2600mm (2).jpg (130.3 KiB) Viewed 1300 times

Then, you can see the diaphragm 70mm I made with a cardboard and put in front of the refractor - I call it the "black old sun" :-)

[TareqPhoto]

but even with your APS-C it was like barely you got full disc at least.

To help you estimate, here is my optical path - first a filter drawer with a IR-CUT filter, then some adaptors (what I found...) to be able to plug the telecentric barlow which is just after, then the daysatr, and the camera 2600mm (APS-C) screwed directly to the daystar with another adaptor. All this is screwed direclty on the focale reducer (x0,75) which is stuck in my refractor's focuser. The refractor itself is a 102mm f/7 so with the 0.75 reducer it gives a focal lenth of 535mm (F/5.25) at the entry of the IR-CUT filter. This mount gives me the disc fitting exactly in the APS-C sensor - I only crop a few pixels up and down in my final photos.

Solaire Zwo2600mm (2).jpg

Then, you can see the diaphragm 70mm I made with a cardboard and put in front of the refractor - I call it the "black old sun" :-)

I thought that placing a flattener or reducer in the scope path before all the protection glasses or filters will be a bad idea, as the heat could damage before it reach IR cut filter, but i could be wrong, i do have GSO 0.5x reducer 2", i can try place it inside a filter drawer or anything else such as a tube adapter but after the UV/IR cut filter, so that will give a protection to the reducer and i can get reduced image before the telecentric Barlow and Daystar, so i will see if your way is safe enough or best it can be done.

I prefer to have either a metal or plastic frontal material for reducing aperture or whatever, not cardboard, it kinda looks like non professional but hey, i am sure many of you if it works and does the job that is all what matter, so i will prepare and get ready for solar soon as long we have cloudy these days, which means it is cold enough to be out during sunny days before our hell extreme summer coming.

Thank you

[LucaR]

I thought that placing a flattener or reducer in the scope path before all the protection glasses or filters will be a bad idea

You are probably right, I would definitivly recommand to put the IR-Cut before any optic (except the refractor itself, sure) whenever it is possible. For me it is not possible... It did not cause issue until now, but I might be reducing the recucer's life duration.

I prefer to have either a metal or plastic frontal material for reducing aperture or whatever, not cardboard, it kinda looks like non professional but hey, i am sure many of you if it works and does the job that is all what matter

That's the idea yes :-) Plus I'm actually not professional, as I dont sell my photos nor do money with them.
And also, most of the time in any technical areas having lot of hardware stuff, things that "looks like" professional are only doing this, "looking like" :-) Actual professional stuff usually dont look like professional at all, because actual professionals dont care about what it looks like, they just need working and reliable stuff :-) BTW, reliable stuff last longer so most of the time actual professional stuff looks old, outdated and dusty.

[TareqPhoto]

I thought that placing a flattener or reducer in the scope path before all the protection glasses or filters will be a bad idea

You are probably right, I would definitivly recommand to put the IR-Cut before any optic (except the refractor itself, sure) whenever it is possible. For me it is not possible... It did not cause issue until now, but I might be reducing the recucer's life duration.

I prefer to have either a metal or plastic frontal material for reducing aperture or whatever, not cardboard, it kinda looks like non professional but hey, i am sure many of you if it works and does the job that is all what matter

That's the idea yes :-) Plus I'm actually not professional, as I dont sell my photos nor do money with them.
And also, most of the time in any technical areas having lot of hardware stuff, things that "looks like" professional are only doing this, "looking like" :-) Actual professional stuff usually dont look like professional at all, because actual professionals dont care about what it looks like, they just need working and reliable stuff :-) BTW, reliable stuff last longer so most of the time actual professional stuff looks old, outdated and dusty.

What i meant not look like professional is that it doesn't look like as a true or actual astronomy/astrophotography gear, like buying a European racing car expensive and installing a cheap Asian tires on it because it won't be used in racing maybe or even used in racing, kind of you have nice great gear and you add a kiddo tool on top of that?!!!