Lunt 60mm First light-WoW

[beren]

Received my Lunt 60mm PT scope with 1200 blocking filter today Impressive looking and well built bit of kit, quite weighty too. Got a feathertouch focuser coming for it but the stock crayford seemed to work reasonably well.
Wanted to just do visual for first light so I had the little {vixen}porta mount set up . Using a while solar filter to help line the Lunt up I noticed the large sunspot that's active at the moment. Used a 24mm pan first up, took a few minutes to get and understand how the pressure tuner work's with the focuser. Once that was worked out and the Sun snapped into focus.....Holy Bloody Mackerel.....what a fantastic sight, I was quite stunned literally Features easily visible across nearly the whole disk, the large sunspot and large filament that's visible currently and three huge prominences all very prominent. Even my wife got excited by the view .
Spent a while going through different eyepieces {24mmpan, 16mm nag, 9mm nag} , found using a moon nd filter darkened the background nicely to give the prominences some added contrast.
So all very exciting and a great afternoon had but forgot the sunscreen Kicking myself I didn't get the gear before the transit of Venus.

[h0ughy (David)]

yep they area nice bit of kit, visually lovely, but wait until you start to want to image. its even better as you get to blow everything up on a bigger screen for easier viewing

[beren]

Thanks David got the camera coming to cover the whole disk in one go so that should be exciting once it get's here

[Raydar (Ray Palmer)]

G'day Stu,

You probably chose one of the best weeks from the last few years to perform first light. More X-Class flares going off than ever. I'm going to be glued to the sun as long as these x flares keep coming.

Cheers

Ray