SolarChat!

Hi

Setting off on an experience with a Chromosphere and a Prominence Quark.

I am lucky the SH Chromo 4.2x is a special one made for a Sky at Night solar imaging attempt with PE mica selected for uniformity.
It shows a nice view visually with a dark background.
I also have a SH Combo Prom.

Rod has removed the locking screws off both so I can swap the telecentric TC and combo CO nose pieces over.

I did a bit of testing yesterday on the big prom.

Starting with the Celestron 102mm F5 in reduced and native mode with the TC and viewed the big prom in both Quarks.

Moved to the 90mm F6.7 triplet with the TC.

And then the 127mm F7.5 triplet with the TC.

The Chromo worked OK in all.

The Prom was bright but had some haze showing. When I looked at the back of the etalon it has some spider web lines in a sort of arc between two of the retaining allen keys. Rod said that these things can happen in manufacture and the lower grade ones used in the cheaper Quarks. Is that so? I had tried a tilted Omega Bobs filter to reduce the brightness and noticed some edge effect which I put down to Bobs old as new filter and the result was too dark. I still noticed a pattern with the 40mm Plossl and then found it was the etalon.

I tried the Cromo in the 127mm with a ES 2x Extender on CO mode at F15. The ES seemed to have a nice dark background. I messed about with Blue-Lightning 48mm to 28.5 mm adapters and some cheap Chinese de-filtered filters which have a 20mm aperture. A 28.5mm aperture at the front of the ES and a 20mm aperture on an extender ring in the front of the 1.25" adapter in the ES seemed to work ok without vignetting. I tried my 25mm Clave' Plossl, a 4000 South American Meade Super Plossl 5 Element and a 40mm Celestron Plossl thrown in with the 102mm F5. The Meade seemed a best compromise on size and brigtness which seems reasonable as the 25mm works well on th M180 with more light.

I found I was observing OK through haze and then seeing it through cloud some time after Rod had given up for the day.

We are slated for a few more clear days for playing about.

Cheers. Andrew.

Interesting to hear these reports Andrew. You really need to upload some pictures so we can visualize these things!

Hi

I had a look at free image sites. Failed to get Dropbox to work, I had it before and synching over-head.

I will try Imagur as you post to a site so hopefully thats it.

Andrew.

Flickr accounts are free...

Hi

I will have a look.

Today I spent 4 hours going through every setting on the Combo Chromosphere option. Took 4 hours.
Recording what I could see at each setting.
With the dial right over clockwise is that hot and so at the red end?
Put them in a table and put the same objects together. See if there is a best setting for most to be seen.
Like the last report I had one, bright jet at a 45deg angle, which only appeared at one setting.
And then look at the images for the day to see which were picked up there as well.
And where there were indications of activity on Gong and SDO.

Despite haze the background was pretty dark especially at the anti-clockwise end.

Used the 3x ED barlow on the 90mm F6.7 Triplet. It has a sweet spot in the middle a bit like the PST mod. I suppose as not tele-centric.
OK for just looking at proms though.

It has the same image size as the M180. I used a Meade 32mm 4000 Super-Plossl as the 40mm Plossl I used before is not as easy to use because of the long fl moving the exit pupil above the eyecup.

Andrew.