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Old 05-06-2018, 10:12 AM
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sil (Steve)
Not even a speck of dust

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Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Canberra
Posts: 1,474
Have to ask, are you certain you are looking at the sun perfectly? Just I find with various solar tools I've used theres I think a bright reflection in the tube which I mistake for the sun until I wiggle and suddenly the directly viewed disc comes into view making it obvious. Especially when trying a white light filter on a new camera. Just takes a bit of practice to get the true solar disc into shot sometimes for me, bit embarassing. A trick i use is if I can notice a curve in the bright object I'm seeing, it may be out of focus or internal reflection so I try to imagine a straight line perpendicular to the curve and adjust my direction towards the middle. Should hit the sun disc directly pretty quick. If you adjust focus when you see the curve do so and if it shrinks, keep adjusting focus slowly and follow the imaginary perpendicular. Doing this should guide you quickly to the suns disc whether its a focus issue or reflection.

Maybe use a 20 or 24mm eyepiece if you have one to provide a wider view before switching back to 10mm etc. I don't think ANY eyepiece will be too wide to turn the sun into a point, it will always be a disc and very very bright and obvious. It should be fairly big in the eyepiece even still I find it problematic to get in my view at times with some gear. At least you're not outside in the cold night air to fiddle with your gear, solar is the warmer sleep friendly astronomy

First be certain to find the sun correctly and focus the eyepiece so you can get the edge of the solar disc crisply. Then you can adjust the Lunt tuning options available to you, reading the manual will help (not being a smart ass here). Rinse and repeat the steps and note down what to do in a way that makes sense to you, eg draw simple diagram of lunt and label 1 to X the adjustable parts and note what they are for, like 2: adjusts focus for flares, 5: adjusts focus for surface features, 13: NEVER touch, OTA comes apart, etc etc.

For those who don't know, tracking mounts often have the options for sun viewing/tracking but the menu option can be buried for safety since mostly people will have a regular telescope on the mount. You can usually find the instruction for your mount in the manual to allow solar viewing and whether its something you have to re-enable every time.

Screen viewing can be problematic as many screens dont look very bright outdoors in sunlight plus you will either be sitting with the sun on your eyes or on the screen making it more difficult. Its not impossible, just not as quick fix as you might think though.

I have a Coronado and no Lunt experience, but I find using my solarscope the sun still hurts to look at. Everything is just red and swimmy with some features in focus and others just out of focus (depending what I'm looking at) its just somewhat uncomfortable on my eyes. Not sure how others find it. Its not as crisp and comfortable as lunar and planetary viewing. I don't know of any viewing tips to help, eyepatch over one eye maybe? Yargh?
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