A Homemade Solar Finder, for the Eclipse (Shallow Thoughts)

A Homemade Solar Finder, for the Eclipse

While I was testing various attempts at motorizing my barn-door mount, trying to get it to track the sun, I had to repeatedly find the sun in my telescope.

In the past, I've generally used the shadow of the telescope combined with the shadow of the finderscope. That works, more or less, but it's not ideal: it doesn't work as well with just a telescope with no finder, which includes both of the scopes I'm planning to take to the eclipse; and it requires fairly level ground under the telescope: it doesn't work if there are bushes or benches in the way of the shadow.

For the eclipse, I don't want to waste any time finding the sun: I want everything as efficient as possible. I decided to make a little solar finderscope. One complication, though: since I don't do solar observing very often, I didn't want to use tape, glue or, worse, drill holes to mount it.

So I wanted something that could be pressed against the telescope and held there with straps or rubber bands, coming off again without leaving a mark. A length of an angled metal from my scrap pile seemed like a good size to be able to align itself against a small telescope tube.

Then I needed front and rear sights. For the front sight, I wanted a little circle that could project a bulls-eye shadow onto a paper card attached to the rear sight. I looked at the hardware store for small eye-bolts, but no dice. Apparently they don't come that small.I settled for the second-smallest size of screw eye.

The screw eye, alas, is meant to screw into wood, not metal. So I cut a short strip of wood a reasonable size to nestle into the inside of the angle-iron. (That ripsaw Dave bought last year sure does come in handy sometimes.) I drilled some appropriately sized holes and fastened screw eyes on both ends, adding a couple of rubber grommets as spacers because the screw eyes were a little too long and I didn't want the pointy ends of the screws getting near my telescope tube.

I added some masking tape on the sides of the angle iron so it wouldn't rub off the paint on the telescope tube, then bolted a piece of cardboard cut from an old business card to the rear screw eye.

Voila! A rubber-band-attached solar sight that took about an hour to make. Notice how the shadow of the front sight exactly fits around the rear sight: you line up the shadow with the rear sight to point the scope. It seems to work pretty well, and it should be adaptable to any telescope I use.

I used a wing nut to attach the rear cardboard: that makes it easy to replace it or remove it. With the cardboard removed, the sight might even work for night-time astronomy viewing. That is, it does work, as long as there's enough ambient light to see the rings. Hmm... maybe I should paint the rings with glow-in-the-dark paint.

Update: I have an even simpler design that works perfectly on a camera with a hot shoe, and almost as well on a telescope, pictured here: Camera solar finder made from popsicle sticks.