|
My introduction to Ha solar observing was a brief peak through a Coronado Solarmax 60 and I was hooked. In time I ended up buying one of the last Coronado Solarmax 40 available (all I could afford at the time that was a bit better than a PST) and this gives me plenty of enjoyment when viewing the Sun.
The prominences and flares and also coronal mass ejections show nicely on the limb. When some of these features are on the surface facing us they can be seen as thin dark snake like features, some quite long. (At least that’s what I see). The entire face of the Sun is red but quite granulated. I do find that I need to tune to enhance either the edge features or facing features but once tuned it pretty much stays untouched. Same for focus since the Sun is so large the edge is ever so slightly at a different focal plane than the face. The helical fine focus on the SM 40 makes fine focusing easy. I use eyepieces from 12mm to 25mm favouring the view between 14, 15, 16 & 18mm.
Note the Ha view is naturally red. It would be more accurate if Lunt on the ‘What you’ll see’ link would show a red image rather than an orange one.
I’m not sure if you have a technical problem with your ‘scope and hopefully not. Perhaps you just need to observe as often as possible to see if you can spot any large features as the Sun is quite dynamic even during solar minima.
One thing I had trouble seeing in Ha was sunspots until I learned to tune the etalon to enhance the surface and even then any large spot will appear as a small black spot whereas in white light it appears much larger. I often have a seperate telescope (TV-60) with either orange glass filter or white Baader film side by side with my SM 40 just to see the sunspots clearly.
|