It’s been a while since I wrote my last post and still have no new images as I’ve been very busy with work and the weather has not been very good.

But I worked on the “hardware” side to be prepared for my next “serious” session, probably tomorrow already.

I decide to get a Lunt Solar BF 12 in place of the original Coronado BF5. I took the 1.25 diagonal version (code B1200d1) and I made the right choice. I have some backfocus problem. I’m about the limit and I got around 1cm with the new BF to reach the focus. So not very much indeed to play with filters, etc.

Here it is how it look like:

I also has some hard time finding the right setup for it and I tough I made a serious mistake taking it as it seemed that the etalon/BF12 setup wasn’t working well. Finally today after some try I found out that the problem in the perfect alignment between the etalon and the BF. I found out that turning the SC focuser “upside down” everything works. I should tighten more the setup and I’ll do when I’ll have the ring adapter for the 96mm focuser/Omni 120 tube.

But from what I’ve seen everything runs great now and I have no more vignetting of any sort and that makes things much cleaner and easy to process. So they should 🙂

Another thing I’ve been working on is the light weight imaging setup made out of an industrial CCD camera and a mini DVR recorder. I’m still waiting for the recorder to arrive but I played a lot with the two cameras that I have: a Pulnix TM-6CN and a Sony XC-ES50. The Sony is incredibly small and quality is even better than the Pulnix one (it is more light sentive). Also it has all the settings quite handy on the back of the camera. So switching the aperture time etc is very easy and doesn’t require any external cable. But it requires a small screwdriver os something to use the small DIP switch for all the settings. Anyway… performances are very good, very very light weight and it was incredibly cheap on eBay. I think I love it already. If it also makes some good shots can be a very nice alternative to the Laptop+DMK41 setup.

That’s all for today. Hopefully starting from tomorrow I’ll be able to post some new picture.