My nighttime astronomy was going nowhere, with night after night of lost sleep and being too groggy the next day to be productive. I knew I still loved astronomy but I was not willing to stay up until 1 or 2 am to enjoy it.  First is the light pollution in my area and the urban life of close neighbors - simply made Night-Time Astronomy less than enjoyable. To address this, I invested in solar filters - like Daystars Calcium K, Badder Wedge, Daystar HA, Continuum, and finally bought a dedicated lunt dual-stack hA telescope.  With this setup, my sleepless nights were a thing of the past and light pollution will not interfere with my imaging.

Here are my favorites and worst places to do business with.

Favorite Online Stores:  Agena AstroProducts & OPT Telescopes

• very responsive
• Excellent return policy
• Knowledgeable staff
• Reasonable shipping rates and they get the product on the truck fast
• Shows the actual inventory status – So, your not guessing

The WORST Online Stores:  High Point Scientific (HPS)

• The worst inventory management around – take your chances if you order, because it may be in stock or 6 months before you see it.
• HPS replies to your questions but fail to fully answer all of them; requiring you to send another inquiry
• Their shipping is SLOW

Wow.. After months of waiting the Baader Calcium K-Line finally arrived in perfect timing with rain.  But, like a good Solar Worshiper I took some time this September to capture a few images with this fantastic filter.  Fantastic meaning – for IMAGING only, no visuals using this one.  Although the sun spot were minimal I had fun capturing the images using this filter.   I did a comparison between the Baader Continuum and Calcium K-Line here at this link.  Most of all, the Baader Calcium K-Line did a fantastic job capturing the solar sun spots. If you love solar imaging and love the sun this is a wonderful filter to use; but it is somewhat expensive and only available in 1.25 filter size.