The most viewed post on my blog from last year was Observing the Sun with an eVscope. Everything about that post is now completely out of date thanks to some recent and exciting updates from Unistellar with the new release of version 2.5 of their app.
What's in version 2.5? The ability to have one of their telescopes to automatically find and guide on the Sun. Of course, to observe the Sun you need a safe solar filter that goes on the front end the telescope.
Above is my eVscope 2 outfitted with the new solar filter available from Unistellar.
The new version of the app includes the Sun in the catalog (see below), though it strangely describes it as a planet. When you choose the Sun it will remind you that you need to have a solar filter in place before pointing the telescope at the Sun. Pointing at the Sun without having a filter on it will ruin your telescope.
Pointing at the Sun is automatic, unlike previously where the telescope had to be manually pointed by looking at the shadow of the telescope. Once the telescope is pointed at the Sun it now automatically tracks on the Sun, which is also a major improvement, as the old version had no tracking. That made focusing very difficult as the Sun was always drifting across the field of view. Now, focusing is much easier, especially with the Sun having so many sunspots.
So how does it look?
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| Image of the Sun taken September 23, 2023 |
Great! Unistellar seems to be applying a color shift to the image to give it a pleasing look. Images taken prior to the app update made the Sun look very un-Sun like (see image below taken last year). I used to always convert them to grayscale because I couldn't stand the color.
Also, I suspect that the Unistellar app is now applying a sharpening routine to the images of the Sun when you save them, but that's okay, as they look great.
All of this is perfect timing as there is a solar eclipse happening in 3 weeks, another one in April and solar maximum is just around the corner! Expect to see more solar image posted here soon.
