I woke up upset this morning, still remembering that my attempts to calibrate my 1.5 year old Solar Spectrum 0.5Å ASO filter were unsuccessful on the previous day. Instead of a temperature readout, like other models, the reference temperature is indicated by a “0”. You move up or down from “0” (-18 to +15) and see which setting gives the best contrast. I’m not totally clear on what the settings represent but, since they can be changed by 0.1 up or down, they behave like temperature changes on other temperature controllers.
I used a Baader 135mm ERF on a 127mm Stellarview with a Quark Chromosphere at the end.
I started at -5 and slowly increased the setting, one unit at a time until I reached +10. The image at the beginning was bland. The appearance of the image became worse and worse as the setting increased to +10, like a washed out white light image. I was so upset that I actually drafted a letter explaining this problem to the dealer. I delayed sending the letter because I decided to take the filter through its entire range of settings, from -18 to +15.
So, today, I started with the filter set to +15 and cooled it downwards. The image remained washed out until
a setting of -11 was reached . At that point, I could see an H alpha image, somewhat weak, but definitely not a bland white light image. As the setting moved to -12, -13 and -14, the H alpha effect became very strong with great contrast. I was very happy to see this. Once past -14, the image started fading a bit. It was obvious why I didn’t find the right setting the day before. So, the best setting for this SS filter is -13, which is reached in a very short time after heating starts.
Then, something else happened.
Then, I kept the setting at -13 for the remainder of the session. I noted how weakly the filter presented proms (I wished at that moment that I had ordered a 0.65Å or 0.7Å version). But then I noticed at the 3 o’clock position that there was a very bright area with a bunch of spikes coming out of the limb. Amazingly these were a very fast growing feature. You could see changes in 10 minutes. The seeing was very bad but I thought the progress of these spikes was worth recording. Like other etalons, varying the gamma can improve prom visibility.
About 54 minutes passed from the first to the last images in the sequence.
Lou
A rewarding day on Sept 30
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Re: A rewarding day on Sept 30
These turned out really good! Very nicely done on the active prominence sequence of images.
James
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Re: A rewarding day on Sept 30
Great catch Lou!
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Re: A rewarding day on Sept 30
Very cool Lou! Glad you got the etalon working.
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