Solar telescope
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[edit] Professional Solar Telescope
Solar telescopes are special purpose telescopes used to observe sun. They are among the biggest fixed telescopes, and they are equipped with optical flat mirror system to track the sun on the sky and to direct it into the telescope. (Those tracking systems are called heliostats or siderostats.)
Some examples:
- McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope
- McMath-Hulbert Observatory(out of service)
- Swedish Vacuum Solar Telescope
- Swedish Solar Telescope
- Vacuum Tower Solar Telescope
- Mount Wilson Observatory
[edit] Amateur Solar Telescope
Other than those big professional telescopes, amateur astronomers can also observe the sun with proper filtering system. For examples, white light solar filter placed over the objective can reveal sunspots, narrow band (in the order of < 1A) hydrogen alpha solar filter can show features like prominences and filaments but they are far more expensive.
This is an example of amateur solar telescope. It is a regular astronomical telescope with a hydrogen-alpha filter system from Coronado. For this particular filtering system, it consists of two parts. On the objective end, we have an energy rejection filter (ERF) and an etalon, and on the focuser end, we have a blocking filter. These two filters work together to produce sub-angstom filtering capability that would be required to show prominence and filaments.
In contrast to professional telescopes, amateur solar telescope can be as small as having only 40mm aperture.
[edit] External links
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