First-light solar image taken at the Astronomy Magazine Observatory.
Yesterday was a clear day at
Rancho Hidalgo, and developer Gene Turner just acquired the first solar image at the
Astronomy Magazine Observatory here. The observatory houses a 14-inch Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope we’ll use for future deep-sky imaging.
Sitting atop the 14-inch scope, however, is a
4-inch Tele Vue NP-101 apochromatic refractor with a SolarScope Hydrogen-alpha filter and a Pictor CCD camera attached to it. Actually, Turner has two Hydrogen-alpha filters he can use. One is a 50mm-diameter model, and one is a double-stacked unit with a 100mm aperture.
Yesterday, Turner imaged through the SolarScope 50mm filter because it’s windy and the seeing (a measure of the atmosphere’s steadiness) isn’t good. He explained to me that the 50mm filter gives a better image on days like Monday. He snapped several dozen shots, and we chose this one to post as our “first-light” image. Turner couldn’t devote much time to post-processing the image, so future shots will look even sharper.
Our goal is to stream images live to Astronomy.com, either via a video feed or by taking and relaying a series of images from the camera to the web site throughout the day. So, visitors here can gauge the level of solar activity at a glance. Using this as a quick check, you can choose whether to set up your own system to image or observe by eye.
Look for daily, rapidly updated solar images from the
Astronomy Magazine Observatory here soon. Tomorrow, Turner is having fiber optic cable installed. A server (that will connect to it and relay the images to Astronomy.com) arrived yesterday and is waiting to be hooked up.