WPO -  the sun in hydrogen H-alpha light

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2005 Jan - long promised and now acquired a diminutive Coronado PST [personal solar telescope] for viewing and recording the sun in red hydrogen Ha- last done with a monster homebuilt spectrohelioscope nearly three decades ago!  Above are the total prom observations for 2005

The sun is very dynamic and whenever possible warrants close attention - you may see something unique.  The dark filament [2005 May 16 below] appeared immediately after a bright flare near a sunspot and both faded away within about 20 minutes.  Images below via Minolta Dimage 7.


Prom above erupts over 10 minutes and 'rockets' 0.1 solar diameter into space !

2005 June 8 - an experiment to shows how the PST performs with the 40mm OG stopped-down with a card mask to 27mm and 16mm apertures.  There was a very slight loss of resolution and proms very faint without a black head cloth at 16mm aperture.  The images below via 40mm and 16mm aperture stops with eyepiece focal length of 25mm fl or 12mm fl with exposures increased to account for dimmer image.  Perhaps a mini-PST is possible!
test on PST with reduced OG size via a stop.

easy PST viewing indoors thro double glazing

Straight out of the box - the sun put on a fine display with two large eruptive looped prominences over a large sunspot on the western limb that were seen to change in almost real-time over an hour.  Two quiet prominences near the north pole, bright active regions around sunspots and long dark filaments [prominences silhouetted against the disk] also seen.  Viewing in comfort from the shaded conditions indoors seems to increase contrast without obvious loss of image quality through double glazing.  Outdoors a simple clock-drive keeps the sun centred and 'static' from a seated position.

Early attempts on a low winter sun to capture images via afocal and Barlow projection into a Canon 300D DSLR camera don't do the PST justice.   Projected image 14mm diameter @ f/40 image onto sensor's 7.4 micron pixels.   Image scale ~1 arcsec/pixel - 40mm OG res ~ 3"arc sampled by 3x3pixels.

visitors 7802=060724 5974=051204 revised/reduced nov 08