Saturday, October 12, 2013

I'm finally getting around to listing the equipment that I currently use for my solar viewing and imaging.  I have a Cemax 2X Barlow, a GSO 1.5-2.0X Barlow and a Televue 2.5 Powermate.  I use these in various combinations for magnification selection depending on the current seeing conditions and what I am trying to image.  The GSO Barlow lens I remove and screw into the camera and use it alone or mounted to the Powermate.  The Cemax Barlow I use with the camera and sometimes just the Barlow lens in the camera.  This gives me a varying range of image sizes that I can image.  For wider field I use the camera alone or with a .5 focal reducer.  I find that either of these requires the use of one or more polarizing filters to reduce the light level so that I can have better control of the Etalon 'sweet spot'.






For imaging I have a DMK 21 Mono camera.  I would like to try a higher resolution camera but I have yet to find one with a high enough frame rate to accomplish what I want.

Update;  I have purchased a DMK 41 mono camera but I haven't had good condition to be able to try it out.  here is a comparison of the DMK 21 sensor and the DMK 41 sensor.


DMK 21 Max frame rate - 60    Resolution - 640 X 480 (307,200 pixels)
DMK 41 Max frame rate - 15    Resolution - 1280 X 960 (1,228,800 pixels)

Reviews that I have read and recommendations say the the lack of frame rate of the 41 will be over come by the increased resolution.   I will report back.

I still have my Coronado PST Solar Scope with an SME-40 Etalon for double stacking.  The PST Etalon is removed at the moment for use in my modified solar scope.





The last picture is of my setup when actually viewing and imaging.  A recent and worth while addition is a clamp on umbrella to get me out of the sun and improve viewing of my laptop.  Sometime I hope to replace my high tech card board box with a collapsible plastic en-closer of some sort.


1 comment:

Bill Griffith said...

Love your set up Bill . The high tech box is miles ahead of my ladder and coat !!