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I am now ready for the transit of Venus, I decided to try full aperture for my 12” LX200 as many have commented that full aperture gives better resolution so I managed to get some Baader Visual AstroSolar Filter Material from Sirius Optics, stocks of solar filters and film are very low as you would expect, the largest sheet they had was 250mm x 500mm, I really needed at least 310mm x 310mm for full aperture so I managed to get around the problem and go full aperture by changing the usual simple design to the one shown below using thick cardboard, It works great, the sun showed a sharp white disc with great detail in the sunspots and the surface showed a slight orange peal like texture. Eyepieces used were Televue Panoptic 41mm, Ethos 17mm and 2x Powermate at magnification of 74x, 148x, and 179x. the design allowed me experiment and view using 1, 2, 3 or 4 quadrants for viewing, by viewing with only one quadrant open the resolution does suffer noticeably, so going full aperture was a good idea in this case.
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