08-09-2017, 12:30 AM
Quote:You're quite the renaissance nerd! ;-) A collection of hobbies that diverse probably *enhances* your sense rather than calls it into question. One of my first childhood obsessions was entomology; I wound up donating my insect collection to a local school but still have all my books and some of my gear, including several butterflies still in paper triangles. Astronomy is another of my interests; I've been saving up for a *good* telescope, but something always seems to get in the way. How much do you know about eclipse videography? I have a digital camera that shoots HD video, but I'm worried about burning out the CCD.I would be very hessitant to expose the camera directly, if you have a bit of mylar, that would likely do the trick as it's what's often used for solar filters. If you DIY, you're taking some risks, but do look at the commercial mylar filters, they're pretty cheap. There may or may not be any difference between the two, I haven't really looked into it much. I had a little 4" casegrain with a solar filter, but I never got any real use out of it and eventually sold it with the scope since I had a nice 8" reflector at the time. Failing that, perhaps some #14 welding glass. Just as with the eye, that's a lot of heat and intensity without any magnification and when you focus all that on a tiny spot, things get bad, fast.
Speaking of telescopes, for a large investment of learning and labor, one can build an amazing quality reflector for a few hundred dollars that easily performs as well as ones that are 5x that price, but no exaggeration, it's a *lot* of work. For those who are looking for something much more easily attainable; I highly recommend Celestron's Astro Master 70AZ (under $100) and Astromaster 90AZ (under $200) as great starter scopes. For the money, they're absolutely astounding telescopes and fully capable of delivering great views of the Moon, Jupiter and it's moons, Saturn's rings, and numerous deep-sky objects. I've bought several of them over the years and given them away, I should probably buy another. They're not much use for photography, except for very bright objects like the Moon and Jupiter, but for astrophotography it's more about getting a solid, high quality mount with a good drive for tracking, which is anything but cheap. Sometimes if you're lucky, you'll find a usable mount for sale by someone who's upgrading to bigger and better, that's how I got my EQ-4 with drive.
