DIY Solar Filter

With the impending Transit of Mercury on May 9 2016 I decided to make my own Solar Filter. This is not a blow by blow account of how I made it as there are plenty of instructions on the Internet for this and also instructions are included with the Baader Solar film which I purchased from First Light Optics.

Following the Baader instructions I initially made two circles but realised the card was nowhere near stiff enough to support the filter. So the one circle was set aside and only one was used utilising double sided tape to stick the filter to the card. This was then mounted on a piece of mount card measuring 300mm x 300mm with a 200mm hole in the middle for the filter.

Attachment to the telescope was with the use of zip ties which are simply pushed through some holes punched in the mount card. Then a series of zip ties were linked around the tube tightened up and these serve to hold the filter in place.