Today was not expected as a solar capture day since the weather was predicting rain, but early in the morning I saw blue skys and knew I had a chance!
The day turned out to be an almost great day, any day is great when you can get behind the Solar Telescopes and today I was able to for a few hours before the clouds rolled in. Funny thing those clouds, they know when I am out.
I was able to get my equipment out by 9:00 am and by 10:00 was established to do some images, during the set up I broke my GPS connection and needed to do a quick repair job with my solder gun. Following the repair job the door bell rang and was greeted by the UPS man with the new Badder Herschel Wedge - Perfect timing. I opened the new box and found the new solar instrument just waiting to be used. After a cursory review of the manual to refresh my memory ( I read the manual earlier in the week on-line). Back outdoors I went with the new Badder Wedge, now I can compare the Lunt Solar Wedge to the Badder side by side.
Well, that will need to be accomplished on a later date due to some technical issues concerning prime focus. This is a big deal, especially if your into imaging and can not achieve prime focus. I will explain this in a bit.
Both my Lunt LS80THa and the 127mm APO was dual mounted the plan was to take a few white light and HA images during the day, due to passing clouds it was difficult and to make it more challenging I could not achieve prime focus on the 127mm and Badder combo. Using the Lunt and 127mm Combo I am just inside prime focus and have no issues. The Badder is a mere few mm from getting me into focus.
As I pointed out in an earlier post, the Lunt does not allow the removal of the eyepiece holder, so you get what you get with their non adjustable version. So, I purchased the Badder because it does allow the removal of the eyepiece holder to facilitate a direct connection to the diagonal body. My thinking was this would solve the Prime Focus issues. Well, the problem was I did not have the necessary adapter to connect my Celestron Skyris camera or DSLR, even though I have two Nikon T-2 connectors, neither fit, nor did I have the necessary adapter to allow the Skyris Camera to direct mount. So I am on the look out for adapters, I say adapters since I will need three.
So, you ask, how did I get the images with the Badder without the adapter? I happened to have an odd ball 2" to 1.25 eyepiece adapter that has a removable top and will slide further into the holder, but without the top the camera is not very secure - Thus the pictures here are only for effect not comparison to the Lunt which I was able to get prime focus and secure the camera in place.
When I receive the necessary adapters I will share a side by side comparison and do a review of both these fine wedges. in the mean time, I can share a few images taken on May 18