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Old March 16th 18, 12:43 PM posted to sci.astro.research
John Heath
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Posts: 13
Default Solar Flare Imaging for Amateurs

On Wednesday, March 14, 2018 at 5:31:51 PM UTC-4, wrot=
e:
Amateur solar flare imaging is on my list of
things to do. The problem becomes how to size
and control a sun cover disk in the telescope.
This is the "blanking" disk in the telescope.
=20
My solution is to cover the sun with an x by y
rectangular card. A control screw will move the
card edge toward and away from the target peak=20
point on the sun. One point of the sun's corona
exposed.
=20
Although this causes a rather limited view of
flares, it fully allows flares to be imaged.
=20
My telescope is having its Magnesium Oxide
film removed and replaced. The project is a
ball of mine. It will be a manual control.


I was thinking home brew pin hole camera. But in this case the pin
hole is to bring the amount of light within the dynamic range of a
computer security cam that has zoom , right left up down pan
abilities. Now you can look at the sun all day from the comfort of
your computer desk. Even take a snap shot now and then if you see
something interesting.

[[Mod. note --
A big concern in the design of any solar telescope is that if you
focus all (or even a substantial fraction) of the sunlight incident
on a reasonable aperature into a small focal plane, you get *very*
intense light and heat. It's essential to reject this safely & reliably.
And any mechanical or software failure in the blocking mechanism could
expose your detector (whether some sort of camera, or a human eye) to
dangerous light levels. People have suffered permanent eye damage when
a solar filter cracked or came loose from a solar-telescope entrance
aperature.

In contrast, a pinhole camera should be safe enough *if* the pinhole
is mechanically robust (i.e., you can be certain it won't fall out of
position).
-- jt]]