Observing the Sun with Coronado Telescopes

The use of digital photography and computers has changed all astronomy, not just amateur solar astronomy, and it has certainly made a lot more techniques available for photographing the Sun. Secondly, the use of “white light” solar filters has improved the detail that can be seen on the solar surface. At around the turn of the millennium, the introduction of the Coronado range of solar telescopes and filters heralded the ‘coming of age’ of amateur solar astronomy. Before then, solar astronomy was mostly white-light only. Hydrogen-alpha systems were expensive and difficult to use, but today even the budget-priced Coronado PST (Personal Solar Telescope) provides a band pass of one Angstrom and is thermally stable. That means that today’s amateur solar observers can see – and image – sunspots, flares, prominences, plage, filaments, and active regions of the Sun, all in amazing detail. Getting the very best out of a Coronado solar telescope still requires knowledge of specialist techniques and an accumulation of experience, which are what this book provides. In Observing the Sun with Coronado Telescopes, Philip Pugh has assembled a team of contributors who show just how much solar work can be done with Coronado telescopes, and explain how to get the very best from these marvellous instruments. The spectacular solar images reproduced in this book speak for themselves – listen to the voices of the experts!

Pagina's: 347, Editie: 2007, Paperback, Springer