George Hripcsak – Chasing the Corona from Home

Amateur observations of the corona outside of a solar eclipse have been rare. White light, H-alpha, and calcium solar telescopes are common but the solar corona is a million times dimmer than the solar photosphere, requiring much better conditions and equipment to capture it. Outside of professional equipment, three amateurs have viewed or imaged the corona with a coronagraph and several others have imaged it with a spectroheliograph. Most capture the E-corona, which is a narrow-band phenomenon that benefits from modern filters and imaging. The K-corona, which is the predominant component of the corona seen during a solar eclipse and which is a broad-band phenomenon, has been imaged only once by an amateur.

George Hripcsak is a member of the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York and he loves nighttime visual astronomy and solar astronomy. He likes building things and, given his computer-related day job, avoids astronomy computing as much as possible.