[issdaol (Phil)]

Had a couple of nice clear days so finally got to test out my Baader Ceramic Hershel Wedge.

Setup my Tak TSA120 on Vixen SXW mount and manually aligned on the sun. This combination is very easy to use as setup time is just a couple of minutes.

Setup time with my TREX would be even better and more flexible but the TOA150 was setup on that for another task at my dark site.

The Baader Hershel Wedge is very simple to use and build quality is first class.

The rear of the Wedge assists in final alignment as the image of the is reflected there allowing for easy manual positioning to centre the sun in the field without needing to use any other solar fingers or other alignment tools.

Left the scope to acclimatise first using the TV31Nagler. The visuals were nice and clear with some nice surface granularisation and a few groups of sun spots visible. There was grouping of 3 very large sunspots just off from the centre of the sun which were immediately obvious.

I spent a couple of hours observing these using various EP's and found that the best views were with my Tak LE30, LE12 and lastly the LE7.5 which provided a beautiful high power view that was almost 3d and clearly showed up the parallel radiating lines on the outer edges of the spots (not sure what these are called??).

Having seen the recent thread on the Daystar adaptor I am now keen to a direct comparison if anyone has one close to Canberra ???!, as it may be worthwhile moving to the Daystar adaptor or having both.

Cheers