Bresser Solarix 76/350 Telescope + Solar Filter by Bresser

Bresser Solarix 76/350 Telescope + Solar Filter
The Bresser Solarix 76/350 Telescope + Solar Filter lets you observe the starry night sky as well as the sun. Sporting an Alt-Azimuth mount, this versatile telescope is easy to use and can effortlessly pan while observing the stars. A smartphone bracket is also placed on the telescope which allows you to attach a smartphone and capture clear and vibrant celestial images.

Price: £97.00

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Bresser Polaris 102 Eq3 Telescope With Solar Filter by Bresser

Bresser Polaris 102 Eq3 Telescope With Solar Filter
Bresser’s Polaris 102 EQ3 Telescope is a compact and lightweight telescope that comes with a powerful, high-quality aperture solar filter that enables the safe observation of sunspots, eclipses and planet transits. The telescope delivers a wide field of view, even with its objective lens diameter of 102 mm and focal length of 460mm. This is achievable thanks to the equipped large 2.0” focuser which allows the use of 2.0” eyepieces. The telescope is mounted with an EQ3 equatorial mount allows for easy and smooth object tracking through the sky. Finally, Bresser has included a smartphone camera adapter which allows you to take photos of what you see through the telescope!

Price: £289.00

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Baader Solar Viewer Astrosolar Glasses – Silver/gold by Baader

Baader Solar Viewer Astrosolar Glasses – Silver/gold
Catch the solar eclipse with these Solar Viewers by Baader. Using AstroSolar Silver/Gold film, these glasses allow the naked eye to make solar observations. Not only do they provide a sharp and energy-balanced image, but they also offer 100% UV and IR protection. With these solar viewers, users can enjoy comfortable eye-sided reflex-free viewing as the moon slowly passes in front of the sun.

Price: £2.50

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Solar Image with Coronado PST and Canon SLR

I decided to have a look at the Sun today whilst it was out for a change and not cloudy. The weather this summer in 2011 in the UK has been terrible cloudy by day and cloudy by night.

I began by putting my standard Coronado PST on my Manfrotto tripod and put in my 9mm eyepiece, I had a good look around and decided to try and attach my Canon 550D to the telescope and take an image. I had not done this before as I usually image with my PST on my EQ6 mount and then use my Imaging Source DMK21 camera to do the imaging. The only problem with doing this is that the CCD chip is quite small at 640×480 so you can never get the whole of the solar disc in the image, you would need to create a mosiac. This is something you don’t have to do the with the large CCD sensor of a modern DSLR camera.

Anyway, I added my T-ring to my DSLR and attached a 1.25″ nosepiece and my trusty 2.5x Televue Powermate. I managed to get the image in rough focus and take a few images, not expecting much. But I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had managed to capture prominances in one image and surface solar detail in the other images.

This was not guided and it was clumsily handheld, I did set the 2 second timer on the SLR to try and cut down on the camera shake, as my Manfrotto tripod could barely hold the weight of the PST, DSLR and Powermate.

Prominances layer: 1/125 exposure, auto ISO (it selected ISO1000)
Surface detail layer: 1/1000 exposure, auto ISO (it selected ISO1600)

The two images were then put on top of each other and tweaked in Photoshop.

So there could be some more work to do in order to lower the ISO setting to try and reduce the noise, but otherwise I was very happy considering it was handheld and not guided.

Click on the image below to enlarge it.