Solar corona from homemade coronagraph

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By: George-Hripcsak December 27, 2022 0

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George-Hripcsak

Utsayantha Mountain, New York

December 10, 2022 at 10:49am

50mm coronagraph, 5303A filter, ASI1600MM Pro camera

While we wait impatiently for the 2024 total solar eclipse, we can view and image the solar corona by making our own eclipses. The attached coronal image was taken from 3200 feet altitude using a 50mm homemade coronagraph, a 5303 Angstrom filter (1.2A FWHM) that captures the E-corona at Fe XIV, and an ASI1600MM Pro camera. It was a relatively quiet day on the circumference of the Sun, allowing the exposure to focus on the dimmer parts of the corona that surround the Sun, with its beautiful streamers and loops. The coronagraph is my second one, using the body of a Celestron Firstscope 80mm refractor, a 50mm uncoated f/20 singlet objective, occulting cones from an old Baader prominence viewer, and assorted parts and lenses purchased online and assembled with hand tools to create a Lyot coronagraph. It matches the simultaneous Solar Dynamics Observatory coronal image very well, but cost 400,000 times less. North is up in this image, which was assembled from two videos, one with the filter on-band and one with the filter off-band to create a subtraction flat. The two brighter regions, at 2 o'clock and 8 o'clock were visible in the eyepiece.