Sunny Monday afternoon.

[Bigzmey]

05/06/2024

We had clouds on Sunday, so I opted for Monday afternoon instead. That worked out great because my son stopped by and looked through my solar rig for the first time. My wife has enjoyed the views to, as always.

I am still optimizing my setup. Lots of fun and money. Last week I was using Celestron Onyx 80ED scope for white light, but its light duty Crayford focuser was struggling with the heavy solar wedge. This week I have stepped up to Stellarvue 102ED. That was a good move! SV102ED focuser has handled the Herschel wedge like it was nothing, and on top of that I got noticeable improvement in the levels of fine details and saw the granulation for the first time. The best views were achieved with Pentax XF 12mm EP (60x). As last week I have used Baader continuum filter for extra contrast. This is the view I saw, but with better resolution.

https://www.spaceweather.com/images2024 ... mi1898.gif

The amount of fine details was unbelievable. I have easily spent 15 minutes just looking at AR3664. It has reminded me of a tadpole.

For the Lunt HA 50mm scope I have acquired 12 mm blocking diagonal. I still can’t believe I have dropped that much $$$ on a diagonal! But you cry just once and then enjoy thereafter. It did not improve the resolution over 6 mm (as expected) but did make it easier to find and maintain the image, which IMO is worth the upgrade.

As I mentioned before the Lunt helical focuser has a short travel and many of my favorite EPs don’t reach focus. This time I came out with a set of various length extension tubes. Unfortunately, they did not help. Even the shortest one overshot required adjustment and now instead of outward I was running out of inward focuser travel. Never matter. I have a nice set of Pentax XFs and Vixen SLVs which cover needed range of EPs quite nicely.

The best view with Lunt was achieved using Pentax XF 8.5mm (41x) and it was majestic. There were many proms. One on the upper right was particularly large and looked like a vortex. There was also an arch at the top of Sun disk. A few filaments, an arch and plenty of intricate details around the sunspots were resolved within the disk.

Another great solar visual!

[messier 111]

another budding solarhead [hope that makes sense]
very good report, I like your enthusiasm.
It is true that when looking at the sun, there are always surprises to see.
thx .

[Bigzmey]

another budding solarhead [hope that makes sense]
very good report, I like your enthusiasm.
It is true that when looking at the sun, there are always surprises to see.
thx .

Thanks Jean-Yves. My first attempt to go solar was triggered by the Mercury transit. Unfortunately, that was around solar minimum and you had to wait a week to see single sunspot. That did not help with enthusiasm. Now it is a different story. Great time to go solar!

[StarHugger]

Nice report and session, cool you got to see granulation !

[Solsearcher]

Very nice report @Bigzmey Great to see you are enjoying your new adventure ! I am not at all surprised that your SV102ED brought you better resolution , aperture matters in solar as well and that scope has mich better glass .
Ha solar can be a slippery slope but you are going in the right direction , you won't regret the investment for the 12mm B/F .
Helical focusers are one way manufactures reduce the price of solar scopes , I am sure you are aware there are other options available . I have been using Moonlite focusers on all my scopes without issue for years .

[Bigzmey]

Thanks Aaron and Mike!

@Solsearcher Most of my scopes have upgraded focusers, so the idea did cross my mind. Surprisingly though I like the feel of the stock focuser. It has just right pitch making focusing enjoyable. And since I found a set of EPs that works I will stay with it for now. My next big ticket will be double stacking.