That's a grand setup and description, Chuck. Thanks for posting. Sent from my iPhone
On Apr 13, 2015, at 5:17 AM, Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> wrote:
I've been jealously reading John Craig's posts lately and yesterday my free time finally coincided with relatively clear skies, so I took the double-stacked PST out for a peek at the sun in H-a.
Activity on the solar disk was pretty amazing, and there were many prominences around the limb.
I'm in the process of upgrading my white-light setup so didn't get any broad-spectrum views, but the H-a view more than made up for it.
I have been using a home-made 50mm refractor with Baader solar film, but recently acquired a Lunt 2" solar wedge that I'll be using with an 80mm refractor for white-light views. I also use the Baader IR/UV filter for an added safety margin (not considered necessary according to Lunt, but maybe I'm paranoid), in addition to the ND3 filter supplied with the wedge. Additionally, a variable-density polarizing filter allows me to fine-tune the image brightness to suit the magnification. I've only had this new white-light setup out once so-far, but hope to have it dialed-in and finalized before the next Winchester park sun party. Even that one outing convinced me that a wedge gives superior views to a full-aperture glass or film filter. I compared it side-by-side with my Thousand Oaks filter and have to give the nod to the wedge, by a slight margin.
The Lunt wedge eats-up more focus IN travel than a standard 2" star diagonal, and the additional filters mean even more IN travel is needed to compensate for their physical thickness.
Thanks for the reports, John, sometimes it takes persistant reminders to get the scope out during the daytime. _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy
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