H-Alpha Solar Imaging on a Budget?

Acquisition H-alpha Solar System Sun
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EvanSpiesTheHeavens avatar
EvanSpiesTheHeavens avatar
Hello,

I have a potentially silly question, but I am curious about imaging solar flares and the like so I will ask.

I have discovered that solar H-Alpha filters are extremely pricey and I am just wondering:

Would it be possible to have a "poor-man's" H-Alpha solar setup by using a broadband solar filter on the front of the scope and then using a deepsky H-alpha filter in front of the camera?? 

I have a feeling this probably does not work for some reason because if it did I imagine people would just do that instead considering it would be so much cheaper. I am curious why it does not work if it does not. And if it does work, why does seemingly no one do it?

--EvanSpiesTheHeavens
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C.Sand avatar
C.Sand avatar
It's been done just not posted too much. If you look around you can find images. You can sort of make it work, but it's very hard to get flares and you need as narrow filters as you can get of course. How  narrow of a filter you have is the answer to why it doesn't work great. DSO filters are ussually 3nm at lowest, though I know antlia has 2.5nms? 2.7? Regardless, solar Ha filters are ussually <1 angstrom, 1 angstrom being .1nm. So the answer is simply they are not narrow enough.
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