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 >>> The“Solar Lab”

This is a new facility designed and build at the Tacande Observatory workshop for targeting the general public and the advanced solar amateur astronomers.
Field installation of the Heliostat at the S. side of the observatory

We keep a Hale Heliostat, without field rotation. The key of the instrument are the two plane Zerodur mirrors of 150 mm. diameter that send a horizontal solar beam inside the observatory trough a hole on the wall.

The Heliostat has a two DC motors for fine setting position controlled from inside observatory.

The Heliostat light beam could feed a 105 mm. diameter achromatic doublet or a 100 mm. plane-convex RG645 single lens (both at F/15). The achromat is used for enlarging and projecting the Photosphere and the plane-convex lens is for observing the Chromosphere combined with the Coronagraph .

The Heliostat installed on pillars.

Chromosphere observation inside the observatory

The bright red prefilter light focused on the Coronagraph occultation disk.

The Coronagraph.

Solar enlarging system by eyepiece projection

At the screen of the solar enlarging system we could observe fine photospheric details as: spots, faculae, plagues, granulation, etc. in a
safe mode. The solar disk projection diameter attains 680 mm.

In addition to the above equipment our guest we shall use our Vixen 120 mm. refractor installed on the dome choosing one of the following options:

1.- Photosphere: Zeiss solar filter, Barlow 2x, eyepiece AV 20 mm

2.- Chromosphere: H-alpha SolarMax90 filter, Barlow 2x, eyepiece AV 20mm

H-alpha SolarMax90 filter installed at the 120 mm. refractor.

Zeiss-130 mm. solar filter, installed at the 120 mm. refractor