Solar observing with fluorite

Hello all.

I have some black polymer left over from an older project and was thinking about making a homemade filter for solar observing to slip over the dew sheild of my Televue Genesis SDF refractor. I perfer white light but this is all I have right now and it's raining and I'm bored.

I have read reports of fluorite glass being sensitive to temperture, especially heat, but with 99.9 percent of the transmissions blocked by the polymer do I have anything to worry about?

Cheers,
Michael

I do not think you are blocking enough of the sunlight. You risk blindness, but it will come on you slowly, like a sunburn on the beach. Except you cannot get solarcaine to the retina. You should be letting in about 0.0003 percent (shade number 14) of the light, not the .1 per cent your film apparently lets in!

I question whether the black polymer is optically flat.

If you can afford a flourite scope, you can afford $25 worth of Baader solar filter material. And that is about as good as it gets in white light.

Alex

I wouldn't use anything but materials made specifically for visual solar observing. The possible hazard involved is not worth saving a few bucks. I only use either my Thousand Oaks glass filter or my Baader Film filter.