Having made a first pass of my partial solar eclipse images from 12/8/26, I thought I’d take a look at how much detail in the visible sunspots had been captured using the Acuter Solarus 80 ‘scope and a digital phone camera – and I was impressed!
I’ve desaturated the colour, slightly boosted the contrast and then slightly sharpened the image.
With little work, this image is as good as I was previously achieving through eyepiece projection onto a sheet of card.
What’s better, the original image here was taken with the ‘scope at the lowest magnification using the pre-fitted zoom eyepiece set at x25 (16mm). I then set the phone camera to a digital zoom of about x2.5
Other users have said that the Solarus 80 also gives good images at x40 (10mm). A modest zoom on the phone camera should give an even better image than this one.
It might also be that a magnification of x80, with the eyepiece zoomed to its 5mm setting, could produce a good image without needing any magnification on the camera. However, a reviewer in Astronomy Now magazine (August ’26) said that this level of magnification on the ‘scope “… simply enlarged the image without revealing meaningful detail.“
Clearly, there are things to try out as I become used to getting the best that I can out of this solar scope, but early indications are very good.
Lee J. Russell, creative 