Appendix
A
The Coronado Solar Telescope
Coronado solar telescopes are
equipped with Hydrogen-Alpha solar filters to show you flares, prominences, spicules, filaments, plages,
coronal mass ejections, and more – not just the sunspots you see through a
conventional white light solar filter. With a Coronado solar telescope, you see
the dynamic, living face of the Sun changing as you watch.
Part one of the two-part H-Alpha
filter used on a Coronado solar telescope is an energy rejection filter and Fabry-Pérot etalon that is typically mounted in front of
the scope’s objective lens. The Fabry-Pérot etalon
consists of two carefully-polished thin glass plates with two
dielectrically-coated partially reflective surfaces. It uses the principle of
interference between the multiple reflections of light between the two
reflecting surfaces to convert the uniform light output of the Sun to a series
of peaks and troughs looking somewhat like a sinusoidal “picket fence,” as shown
in the blue curve in the illustration (illustration not to scale). Constructive
interference occurs if the transmitted beams are in phase, and results in a
high-transmission peak. If the transmitted beams are out-of-phase, destructive
interference occurs and results in a transmission minimum.
The energy reflection portion of the
ERF/etalon assembly blocks the passage of UV and IR radiation into the scope to
limit heat buildup within the optical tube. It also allows only the crimson
portion of the Sun’s spectrum into the telescope.
Part two of the filter is a blocking
filter built into the star diagonal supplied with the scope. This blocks all of
the “picket fence” peaks except the one that is centered on the 6562.8 Ångstrom H-Alpha line of the Balmer
ionized hydrogen series in the crimson portion of the Sun’s spectrum. By
blocking the flood of light at all other wavelengths, you can observe only
those solar features emitting or absorbing light in the chromosphere
at the H-Alpha wavelength. Blocking all but this wavelength reveals faint
details that would otherwise be lost in the thousand-times brighter glare of
the Sun’s photosphere.
The narrower the passband
of the filter, the greater the contrast on disk details. Stacking two etalons
that are tuned to slightly different frequencies that partially overlap
(double-stacking) reduces the passband from the
<0.7 Ångstrom width of a single etalon to <0.5 Ångstrom, as shown in the red curve in the illustration
above (illustration not to scale). A <0.7 Ångstrom
filter gives you a good balance of prominence and disk detail. If disk detail
is of more interest to you, however, a double-stacked <0.5 Ångstrom filter will provide maximum contrast and
visibility of active regions on the solar disk, but with some loss of image
brightness and faint detail in the prominences. Most observers willingly trade
some image brightness for increased contrast.
The refractive index of air changes
with altitude and to a lesser and more gradual extent as the temperature
changes. This can affect where the filter’s passband
falls in relation to the H-Alpha emission line. Accordingly, the filters
include a mechanical tuning mechanism that lets you precisely center the filter
on the H-Alpha line whether you are observing at sea level or in the Rockies,
during the dog days of summer or in the middle of winter.
Optical interference filters shift
their passband towards shorter wavelengths when they
are tilted in relation to the light path. The filters are shipped with their passband falling slightly on the longer-wavelength red wing
of the H-Alpha line. The tuning mechanism tilts the etalon, shifting the passband from the red wing toward the shorter-wavelength
blue wing of the H-alpha line. This sweeps the filter’s passband
across the H-Alpha line, no matter what the altitude or temperature, letting
you tune the filter precisely on-band for the highest contrast and detail.