Telescope Buying Guide: Filters for Viewing the Sun

Video Transcript

"Another common request is people asking me, "can I look at the sun effectively? How do I view the sun? Can I use my telescope to view the sun?" Well, I'll shed a little bit of light on that right there for you. Okay, so when you open up your telescope, eventually or evidently the first thing you see is a disclaimer telling you never, ever, ever point the telescope at the sun, which is good advice. So if you want to view the sun, there are a couple of different ways you can do it. Traditionally, there's a white light filter which turns the sun kind of light white, light blue color and allows you to see sun spots. Then there's an H Alpha filter like this little guy here, that allows you to see sun, the granulation, the filaments and the solar prominences. A little bit more exciting than the white light filter. As far as cost effective, let's say I had this telescope here and I want to get an H Alpha view, a view that shows me the sun, not quite, but more like this guy over here. Now you can see this is an exaggeration, but what an H Alpha filter does show you is the fine filaments and granulation on the sun. You will see flares and prominences, and you can do it all in a telescope this size right here. Now if I were to try to get an H Alpha view on a telescope like this, it would require a filter, an adapter to go over the top, and then a filter to filter out the light and just show us the H Alpha spectrum here. This would cost us well over a thousand dollars to do something on this scope here. More cost effective with a little guy like this here. Only forty millimeters of light gathering ability, plenty for the sun, and six ninety-nine for exciting H Alpha images. One of my favorite things to view is the sun. I love the prominences, just the little bittiest of hair of a filament right there. You can put a dozen of our planets in something that size. So if you want to look at the sun, I would recommend either a white light filter, something relatively inexpensive that you can see sun spots. But for more exciting, for more detailed viewing, an H Alpha telescope is encouraged and much more cost effective to buy a dedicated telescope than it would be to take your existing telescope and try to put an H Alpha filter on it."