Karina and Jesse's Furry Creek Wedding

I’ve attended many weddings in my life, probably at least 150, maybe more. No, not because I have thousands of friends; rather, in my past life I was a wedding photographer. However, I have never seen a telescope brought to a wedding before (and why would one be?). After all, weddings typically take place during the day, and the reception usually is in a hotel somewhere in the heart of light-pollution-land.

The opportunity finally presented itself when my partner Maria invited me to her friend Karina’s wedding in beautiful Furry Creek, a 30-minute drive up the Sea-to-Sky highway from my home in North Vancouver. It was a glorious sunny day, and I packed my Takahashi FC-100DZ, along with the Daystar Quark filter that I had recently received, with the hopes of setting it up between the ceremony and reception to share views of our nearest star with the guests.

The UBC Astronomy Club purchased the Daystar from my friends at Markarian Fine Optics, Vancouver’s one and only telescope store. I had been playing with it for the past few days, first with the Club’s 3-inch Televue Pronto, then with my 4-inch Takahashi once my UV/IR cut filter arrived. The Daystar can be used without such a filter for telescopes smaller than 4 inches, but a UV/IR cut filter is recommended for telescopes between 4-5 inches to cut down on excess heat.

The Daystar is an h-alpha “eyepiece”. In the photo above, the Daystar is the red/black device that is plugged into the diagonal, with the eyepiece inserted into the Daystar. It’s powered by a battery pack (just about any USB battery pack will do), and my 5000 mAH Anker pack seems to power this device in perpetuity. It takes 5-10 minutes to heat up to the correct temperature, necessary to isolate the 656nm wavelength ideal for viewing intricate features of the sun.

Once it reaches the correct temperature, a little LED indicator turns from yellow to green, indicating that it is ready for use. I paired it with my old 32mm Celestron Plossl - the manual says that the Daystar works best with simple eyepieces, and from my personal experience, that is absolutely correct. This is due to the Daystar’s built-in 4.2x telecentric Barlow, extending the telescope’s f/ratio by 4.2x. This turns the Pronto into an f/28.56, and my FC-100DZ into an f/32! Modern exotic wide-angle eyepieces like the Televue Delos or the APM XWA eyepieces are optimized for fast scopes and look absolutely terrible with the Daystar.

So how does the Daystar perform? In a word, exceptionally well! Once I locate the sun, which is challenging (see above comment about the 4.2x Barlow), but once I do, I’m rewarded with some of the most detailed views of the sun I have ever seen. With the Televue Pronto and the 32mm Plossl, I can fit the entire disk of the sun in. With the FC-100DZ, I can see a quarter slice, but the amount of detail visible at this magnification is magnificent. It’s particularly difficult to get a good snap of the sun through the eyepiece with my cell phone, but the photo below shows a blurry representation of the amount of detail present. Massive prominences and surface detail on the chromosphere are visible.

Back to the wedding! How did the solar outreach go? Well, I set up my scope on this serene grassy area nestled in the trees, beside a small creek, with guests mingling, enjoying drinks and some cocktail hour food. Once I located the sun, I was starting to attract some attention from the guests (a telescope at a wedding?!), and I invited some of them to come over to take a look.

Solar observation is somewhat tricky. For one thing, it’s very bright, so it can be hard to see through the eyepiece. For another, the Barlow inside the Daystar also increases the already-plenty eye-relief of the Plossl, making eye placement particularly challenging. For people who might be looking through a telescope for the first time, it’s an uphill battle.

Still, some of the guests got a good look at the sunspots, surface detail, and the many prominences visible! I did my best trying to create shade over the eyepiece, coaching them on what to look for; after all, a cursory glance reveals nothing more than a fiery red disk, and I find it takes the brain some time to adjust for the red to tease out the detail hiding within.

For every guest who had a hard time seeing much (“I think I saw it…”), another was absolutely thrilled (“I’d stare at this all day!”), for it’s one thing to see the sun through a regular filter, and another entirely to see it in glorious h-alpha.

Perhaps this is the start of a business opportunity.

Congratulations to Karina and Jesse on a beautiful wedding!