The Sun

[Scooot]

I've just received a pair of Kendrick solar filters that I bought mainly for the forthcoming eclipse I'm hoping to see from the Faroe islands, so I tried them out this lunchtime.

They're very easy to attach to the bins and are very secure with the three thumb screws that hold them in place.

With the filters in place it took me much longer to find the sun than I'd expected but when I did I was very impressed with the view. It was nicely framed in my 10x50s showing a white ball with a cluster of, I think 3, sunspots South East of the centre. After watching for a while another sunspot appeared near the top left. It had a little yellowish/orange tinge around part of the circumference which I presume is chromatic aberration, although obvious it didn't detract from the overall view. When clouds started to pass, the resultant dimming of the sun caused the rest of the FOV to change from black to a greyish blue, which itself was an interesting sight.

This is the first time I've looked at the sun with anything and it was a great experience so I'm going to get a lot more use out of these than I originally envisaged. Do many others use bins to view the sun?

[Lorne]

I made a couple of filters for my 10 x 50's with Baader solar film for the 2012 solar transit of Venus which was clouded out from my location just outside Edinburgh so I'm hoping to dust em off and use them for the forthcoming eclipse. Hopefully the weather will play ball this time to allow me to get some views, its not something I usually do as it goes against all the usual advice of never looking at the Sun win binoculars 

[StarSapling]

I made a pair of filters for my 20x80's.  When I use them to view the Sun, the Sun seems to appear to be a sphere rather than a disk, as viewed through my telescope.