On August 21st, my wife and I will be in Columbia, MO watching a total eclipse of the Sun! We are taking our camper and staying in an RV park that will have 2 minutes and 34.3 seconds of totality beginning at 1:12 pm. There will be about 3 hours of partial eclipse viewing. We will be in good company – most of the sites are taken by folks with solar telescopes.
I plan to use my Coronado PST (Personal Solar Telescope) and one of my MallinCam cameras to capture periodic images during the partial eclipse time and during the total eclipse period. I have a MallinCam Solar System Imager that is great for close up images of the Sun, but I can only see a portion of the Sun with it. So I decided to try out my DS2.3+ which has a much larger sensor as a possible candidate for the job.
I plan to use my Coronado PST (Personal Solar Telescope) and one of my MallinCam cameras to capture periodic images during the partial eclipse time and during the total eclipse period. I have a MallinCam Solar System Imager that is great for close up images of the Sun, but I can only see a portion of the Sun with it. So I decided to try out my DS2.3+ which has a much larger sensor as a possible candidate for the job.
When I tried the DS2.3+ on my PST I was able to see the full Sun, which was good. But the Sun was smaller than I liked, and I felt like I could not bring it into focus, which was bad.
I then added my Coronado Barlow so the Sun would fill the image better. I could focus it fine, which was good. But I could not see the full Sun, which was bad.
For some reason, I started taking a closer look at the Barlow and noticed that the Barlow lens appeared to be screwed into the end of the Barlow. And I noticed how far away the Camera is from the Barlow lens when it is inserted into the Barlow.
Then I wondered if I could unscrew the Barlow lens and screw it onto the nosepiece of the DS2.3+ thereby reducing the magnification some. So I tried it. Yep, that worked.
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When I placed the DS2.3+ with the Barlow lens screwed onto its nosepiece into the PST, the Sun now nicely filled the image and was easily focused. This is good.
After additional testing, I do plan to use the DS2.3+ with the Barlow lens attached to its nosepiece for the solar eclipse trip. For these tests, I used an exposure that would easily show the image size and any solar prominences. Here is another image from my testing after some histogram adjustments.
By the way, I also decided to blow air toward the DS2.3+ to help it stay cool while it baked in the Sun for 3 hours.
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