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Good morning,

If you do attempt to add anything to the wedge, it is important to do so on the output end only, not the telescope side. Anything put in front of the wedge will be exposed to full, concentrated sunlight and may fail.

As I said earlier, my Moonlite on an AR6 gives me plenty of extra travel, both visually and imaging, even with a 0.5x reducer. Interesting that the AR5 would be so much different; you'd think they would be similar in basic design.

Regards, Marc

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Agree completely about filter location for wedges. There have been threads here about removing the barrel on the EP side of a wedge and gluing a ND filter, polarizer, or green filter there.

My experience was several years ago and from talking to tec support and from reading posts here it was clear that the Baader 2in wedge had focus issues with several OTAs while the APM did not. Having focus issues with both the AR5 and ED80 indicates the problem is more with the Baader wedge than the OTA being used.

Seems like I read somewhere that Baader needed to change its design; not the OTA makers. I have never had issues with afocal or prime focus photography with my AR5 or ED80 using webcams, digicams, dslrs, or dedicated astrophotography imagers.

Does anyone know if the newer Baader wedges have been redesigned to address the focus issue?

Given that APM wedges never seem to have focus issues and Baader does it cant be a hard problem to fix on the wedge side.

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Meade ETX 90, Meade AR5, Orion ED80, Atlas GT, 8 in Newt, Coronado DS SM40, Garrett 10.5X70, Sigma SD10, SD14, Canon 1D2, Xti, Nikon CP4500, C-14

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<<SNIP>>

I would be interested in seeing a side by side test with a Baader wedge, APM wedge, and Baader film. I may try and take some pix with my APM and film and see if you guys can tell which is which in a blind test.

If anyone has both a Baader wedge and an APM wedge that could do a side by side test I would be interested in the result.

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Hmmmm. I have all three (Baader 2 inch Wedge, APM 1.25 inch wedge and Baader filter). Frankly, I wouldn't have bought the smaller APM wedge if my 60MM F15 had a 2 inch focuser

I could compare all three using my TV-76 and the same EP, although our weather is deteriorating today.....If someone is in the Tucson area with a camera wants to "play" at the same time, ping me. (I flat out stink with cameras.)

FWIW, my experience with these three tools is that attenuation of the light is critical (in addition to the ND3 that a wedge requires). Either too dim or too bright will affect the contrast. Finally, the best method I have found to determine the correct attenuation is to observe on a partly cloudy day. If clouds increase contrast, your image is too bright.

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What is your visual impression of the film vs the wedge?

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SNIP
FWIW, my experience with these three tools is that attenuation of the light is critical (in addition to the ND3 that a wedge requires). Either too dim or too bright will affect the contrast. Finally, the best method I have found to determine the correct attenuation is to observe on a partly cloudy day. If clouds increase contrast, your image is too bright.

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I agree with this; clouds seem to benefit what I see in the EP using a wedge. The problem is that no one really has control over the correct level of clouds to do this. Not to mention I frequently will simply not set up if there are clouds.

I have also noticed this same benefit when using my 32X optical mag video cam with a Baader film filter on it.

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Meade ETX 90, Meade AR5, Orion ED80, Atlas GT, 8 in Newt, Coronado DS SM40, Garrett 10.5X70, Sigma SD10, SD14, Canon 1D2, Xti, Nikon CP4500, C-14

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For viewing the Sun in "white-light" or broadband conditions, a green filter tends to help because:

--> The human eye is most sensitive in the 550 - 560nm region
--> Relatively few absorption and emission lines exist in that area of the visible spectrum
--> Excess chromatic aberration will be reduced (in refractors), reducing the apparent focus zone.

A typical Wratten #58 filter has a transmission peak wavelength at about 535nm with a FWHM of about 60nm. The Baader continuum filter is considerably narrower than this, peaking at about 538nm and FWHM of 10nm. This is one reason I believe it costs more.

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The Baader Continuum filter is also a multi-layered dielectric coated interference filter on an optical substrate. Baader's filters are advertised as being precision manufactured to meet clarity, homogenity, and optical flatness standards not typically found in standard colored glass filters.

Given the nature of daytime seeing conditions and solar observing, it is not suprising many don't notice a significant image quality difference when using a standard green vs. Continuum filter.

Therefore, whether one feels this is worth the additional cost for a Continuum filter vs. standard seems to be a matter of personal preference.

For me, if I were only using a $50 Baader film filter, then a relatively inexpensive green glass filter would be about right. For a $500+ Herschel wedge, this would seem somewhat at odds with the money otherwise invested for the higher quality upstream component(s).

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Bob Yoesle

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars...
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Desiderata

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