Posts Tagged Solar
Sun Observation – 2026-05-24
Posted by jmeriaux in Astrophotography, Sun on May 25, 2026
Taken at 20:05 UTC on 24th of May 2026.
Captured in H-Alpha using my William Optics 60mm refractor with a Daystar Quark filter and a ZWO ASI 432MM camera. The final image is a mosaic of 4 panels, each stacked from about 500 frames.
Solar astrophotography
Posted by jmeriaux in Astrophotography, Sun on November 26, 2008
With the home made solar filter I made with the baader solar film I took some pictures of the sun, with my Orion StarShoot Solar System Imager II and the Orion 102 premium refractor on the 11/15/208 at 11.15 am PST.
Solar activity is not great these days, making things more challenging … I can remember days where giant sunspot complex where visible with the naked eye.
Shooting the Sun with a Solar filter is not an easy task. Dust speckles on the digital camera show up as you can see here on the below picture – at the right of the sun spot.
It is critical to take flat field pictures and use software like Max DSLR to substract the flat field image from the Sun spot pictures to get higher quality images.
After image processing here is the result. Notice the granulae, sun spot, and faculae around the (small) Sun spot.
Home made solar filter using Baader Solar Film
Posted by jmeriaux in Do it yourself on November 20, 2008
I had for some time the Orion 102ED premium refractor – and I was not able to find any ready made solar filter in the market to fit this scope including at the Orion’s stores.
I finally decided to buy a Baader solar filter film to build a solar filter. I ordered the baader solar filter film (A4 size) at the scope city web site.
I followed the instruction posted on the Baader planetarium web site. I was very pleased with the result – the visual observation exceeds whatever I saw with glass filters on same or larger scopes and this for one fourth of the price I paid for glass filters!! . I had also extra film left to build filters for my guide scope and finder scope.
I bought the Visual solar film (it comes in two flavors – for visual observation and for Astrophotography). But I was able to use the visual solar film for both visual observation and astrophotography. I’ll post solar pictures I made with this setup very soon.
Here is a picture of the whole setup – the 102ED premium refractor and home made solar filter with the Baader solar film …
Astrophotography in Urban Environment 
