Sunday, July 15, 2012

Trying some sunshots

Tried to do some sun shots. As always, it’s a pain in the ... to do the initial alignment+focussing with the camera/laptop. Without focus, I can’t do the alignment. But without basic alignment, it’s hard to do focusing as the only thing out there is the sun (i.e. if it’s not in the image, there is nothing to focus on :-( It would be a little bit easier if I could do the focusing through the computer (does the telescope remote control support that?) Or even if I could store that.

The pictures came out VERY blurry. Don’t know if this is because

  • I’m doing this in the middle of the city and the warm air movement is just making it so blurry, or
  • I can’t focus well, or
  • I need some color filter or such

I compared the different sun filters that I have: The photo filter definitively is filtering out less then the one for direct viewing. The sun finder on the new filters is helpful. Ran into the issue that the camera hit the mount when I tried to direct the telescope on the sun when it was VERY high in the sky.

Did some bracketing around exposure times (1/100 - 1/4000). I know now some upper boundaries where I don’t see anything. But because the images are so blurry, I don’t have a clear winner.
I thought more about the focusing issue. Maybe starting with taking photos through the telescope was too ambitious. Ordered a camera mount for the telescope, so that I can piggyback. And also a ball head mount for my tripod for taking photos from there (because the 3 way mount is WAY too complicated).

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