The ICE 58mm ND100000 is a Neutral Density Optical Glass Filter, ultra dark with an exposure factor of 16.5 F Stops. This makes it similar in light reduction to Baader solar film, but it is less fragile.
The camera used was a A Panasonic Lumix DMCFZ72, 60x optical zoom bridge camera. A 55 to 58mm step up ring was required to connect the filter to the 55mm threads on the front of the lens.
The bridge camera fitted with the ICE filter
The camera was mounted on a static tripod and images of the Sun were taken at maximum zoom in bursts of 3. A total of 138 images were captured.
The images were precisely cropped to 1700 x 1700 pixels using Nicola Mackin’s AstroCrop.
Click on an image to get a closer view
The directory containing the cropped images
The images are at this stage virtually aligned due to the precise cropping.
The images were registered and stacked in Siril
The resulting image was levels adjusted in the Gimp 2.10
The image was wavelet processed in waveSharp
The image was post processed and rotated in the Gimp 2.10 and PhotoScape X Pro
The Sun in white light June 23 2023
In conclusion, the ICE ND100000 58mm optical glass solar filter performed very well, and equally well as our Baader and Thousand Oaks solar filters. We obtained it via Amazon UK but it came from Desmond Photographic in the USA. What we like about this filter is that being optical glass, it is less fragile than the Baader filter, and not being a coated filter, it is not subject to pinhole damage.
The filter stores nicely for convenience in the type of container that we use for storing our 2” filters
