Sunday, November 17, 2024

Now what?

We got a few hours of sunshine today so I was back out there with the Lunt 50. Without adjusting the tuning from yesterday, there was a large filament visible near the two sunspots, and some incredible prominences at the edge in the same region. I wish I could show a picture of it. I was able to get the ZWO computer and camera to give me a preview image today, but was never able to get it in focus. I don't think it will rack in far enough. It makes no sense to me. The Cloudy Nights forums talk about using this camera on this telescope.

I decided to take a step back and see if I could get the combo to work on my regular Televue 85 scope with a white light solar filter. First I shot a straight through image with the Canon EOS M100, shown below. But I was unable to bring the ZWO camera into focus either straight through or through the diagonal. If the M100 can be brought to focus, I shouldn't have to rack back much more than an inch to get the ZWO to the same focal plane. It's just physics.

I even tried shooting my camera phone handheld through an eyepiece, and that didn't work. (I have a eyepiece attachment somewhere.) I don't know what to do at this point. Tomorrow I may try focusing the ZWO/Televue on the nearby mountain. If that doesn't work...I don't know what that would mean. Next, I will probably try my Scopetronix attachment which is a rather heavy piece of metal that allows shooting through an eyepiece. That should work with the EOS cameras, but I'm not sure how I will attach the ZWO camera to it. At this point I just want to get that first Lunt image with whatever camera I can get it with.

Use your imagination on this white light image. The interesting features mentioned above would be just below the two sunspots at right in this image.

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