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Old 23-03-2015, 09:59 AM
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Allan
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Join Date: Feb 2013
Location: Newcastle
Posts: 937
I will start by warning you to be very careful with solar viewing. Make sure you know what you are doing before attempting solar viewing because you can quickly destroy your vision if you get it wrong. On your Dob you can use a full aperture solar film filter that fits over the front of your tube. But you must be very careful there is no way for it to fall off or get knocked off while viewing the sun, or else instant eye damage. You can't use a filter that screws into the eyepiece to view the sun because the heat generated will almost instantly shatter the filter.

I do some white light solar observing with my refractor and that keeps me happy enough. I am not interested in buying a dedicated solar scope, but for those who really get into solar observing, using a Ha solar scope is really cool. I've viewed through them at star parties and they are pretty neat.

My suggestion though is to get help from someone with experience first, and try and observe through a solar scope before buying one, as they can be expensive and only useful for one object.

What sort of objects do you like observing? That will help determine which eyepieces and filters to recommend. As far as where to buy, I can highly recommend Bintel in Sydney. They are very helpful in the store. They could explain the whole solar observing thing to you so you could get started safely.
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