Ha Sun, flat field

[PaulB]

How do you take flats of the Sun. When using a Quark Chromosphere and an ASI174MM. With a SkyWatcher ST102 please.

Thank you.

[admin]

Hi,

my approach is to fix a piece of transulcent plastic over the top of the telescope to diffuse the sunlight and take the flats that way. You could use the inner bag of a breakfast cereal packet (after cleaning it of the dust!) or some notebooks have a translucent cover over the front page which can be handy. Once you have found your piece of plastic of the right size, all sorts of DIY approaches can be used to hold it onto the aperture of the telescope, from sticky tape to 3d printed holders.

You will have to increase the exposure quite a bit when using this approach to take flats, but it should work nicely.

cheers,

Robin

[PaulB]

Thank you Robin.

I will have to make a diffuser for my ST102. I have a cereal bag. So I'll use that.

Thanks for the advice.