LukeTheNuke

Well done on your first mosaic! And nice to wave goodbye again to that lovely AR! Or should I say, "Au revoir". I didn't notice any join (though it must be said, I'm not the most observant - my wife sent me out onto the drive a few times to try to spot what was different one time - I didn't notice that she had car in a different colour...)

Some silly solar noob thought the AR had already said tatty bye yesterday! (cough) What an AR! What a week! Even the dude who was selling the Lunt 100 has had second thoughts after the past week!

Ah, I thought it would be gone by today! Thanks for the final view.

Very nice, well done battling the conditions! I felt a bit sorry for those other spots today, they are interesting too and worth some attention. But it's hard not to look at the monster! I didn't pop out as much as I was hoping today (some boring jobs to do), it did strike me that the proms had changed quite a bit by the time of my last view.

A lot of stargazers would love to know how to fade the moon in and out.

Yeah. I think white light is arguably better value, especially when spots like those turn up! How do you get on with your Solar Scout? Are you happy with it?

Very nice! A day for the 174? Tatty bye to that lovely AR. I can't complain about the views of it this week. I took in a few views today. Thin cloud here for a lot of the day again, though we had some decent seeing before 12. My wife Sarah dug out her DSLR last night in case the aurora showed up again (I have no idea where mine is!), and the thought of borrowing it for five minutes today did cross my mind!

Wow, those are fantastic, Roy. Well done! Gosh, my wife was going on about maybe getting an Edge 11 last week I think it was (though I think she's since cooled on the idea - though I could go on about how ace it'd be for star parties as a fairly compact scope). Theses image certainly don't put me off that idea! Thanks for the fab views!

Lovely pics, and your enthusiasm is lovely too! 😎

Wow! What a stunning collection! Congrats! Oh, you're hanging out with the posh folk at solar chat? Please drop in from time to time for tea here. I think they probably take biscotti rather than jaffa cakes.

It could always be worse. My chips took a hit at the seaside once. My back too, but I was more concerned about the delicious chips. It could always be worse. A friend's coffee with Baileys took a hit one time by the coast. I'm not sure it gets much worse than that. But it probably does. Gosh, could you imagine not noticing the coffee with Bailey's had been hit? PS please give your lucky scope a loving stroke, for another aurora show tonight. PS2 I didn't finish the chips, honest.

Well done, just seen a video of the solar flare party on Gong. If the sun can arrange the really big one for 2 pm, that would be fab.

And for some of us, keep going when the sun comes up!!! 😁 Those spots look fab, and the big prom has made a break for it this morning. I was robbed of a view of the prom thanks to thin cloud, but I caught the remnants ten minutes ago visual only (pic below is from Gong), which are still quite considerable. Not with my camera, alas (five o'clock position, going, going, ...):

Lovely pics! I regret that I didn't check again later in the night. I thought I checked the aurora alert site and it looked over and done earlier in the night (well, morning), but my bad. D'oh, I was awake for a while, as well! The shooting star I saw was travelling west to east, starting very much in the east, and burning out towards the eastern horizon. My wife and son also caught the end of it, which was ace. I think I caught most of it. It was amazing, multiple burning fragments, a real, sparkling firework! How funny that it happened the same night. Or maybe I just don't look up enough 😀 Damn, when this hobby is good, gosh. It takes your breath away. I've been enjoying the sunspots again this morning. Thin cloud here, which is a shame, as I couldn't see the big prom making a break for it. Still, a bonus to see that amazing active region again. Thanks everyone for posting your pretty pictures, they all look amazing! I've just got blooming sensor noise. #shouldhaveboughtanexpensiveappleorsimilarandnotacheapytabletandmycheapphonedoesntevenhaveacameralol

Can a UV/IR cut filter be used as an internal ERF (instead of an external D-ERF) for the Baader Sundancer II h-alpha solar filter with a 120 mm scope? I don't want to go the (expensive) external D-ERF route, as I like using a h-alpha filter in different refractors (60, 85, 100 and 120 mm, and who knows what else in the future). They say up to 80 mm no ERF is required, same as the Quark, as far as I recall. And I believe both are mica-spaced etalons. I know you can use a UV/IR cut with the Quark in a 120 mm (hence why I ask for the Sundancer), but I'd like to avoid going Quark again, due to multiple issues I've had with them, unfortunately, as lovely as a good Quark is. The latest being that my wife's Quark hasn't aged well. One plus for me of the (much more expensive) Baader Sundancer, I understand, is that it uses a Solar Spectrum filter (which has a good reputation as far as I know), and should hopefully be non-ageing, though you still need to avoid it freezing ("The dielectric coating of the block filter (instead of the usual silver coating) and airtight storage of the SolarSpectrum Etalon filter in oil prevent the ageing processes of simpler filter designs. With proper treatment, the SunDancer II will retain its performance for many years."). Thanks for any help with this. Luke

Saw strong shafts of light here in Bedfordshire, and hints of colour. Unfortunately all my pants tablet has recorded is sensor noise! And I saw the best meteor I've ever seen! Towards the east. What a night! And the sun wasn't too bad this morning either.

It's much better than my attempt yesterday with an action camera and then a tablet!

Nice one! I'd better finish up my gin in case we're all doomed. Would be a shame for it to go to waste.

Wow, that's fantastic. Manual tracking! Well done! I used to use drift just for low power on the sun with a 60 mm refractor. It's great to see someone using a dob and manually tracking! It makes me wonder about using a manual dob for lunar imaging.

Lots of detail! A manual dob? Are you moving the scope at all during capture or letting the sun drift over the chip? How many frames are you getting to stack?

Congrats! I don't expect to ever part with my Equinox 120. Great scope! And it's saved me a lot of money because it's already quite big and tells me that perhaps my frequent wish to get a 150 mm doesn't need to come true! The scope looks in good nick, I quite like that case too. Enjoy!

And the proms are better seen not through cloud! 😀 I recall now that thin cloud can zap proms. I'd just forgotten. The prom looked plenty bright to me at F7 and F9 yesterday. I'm used to trying to see spiral structure in faint galaxies, so proms aren't much of a challenge for me usually! I remember reading up the technical details on the Quark and fussing over optimal focal ratio. But having used scopes from F6 to F9 (F6, F7, F7.5, F9) hundreds of times, swapping over white light and h-alpha sometimes (obviously with the scopes capped and pointing away from the sun!) I found them in practice all perfectly usable, for proms and solar disc. My favourite scope for visual with the Quark is the F9 100 mm, even though the F7.5 120 mm has more aperture as well. My wife agrees.

Thanks for the tip. I do usually normally use an F9 with the Quark for visual (the lovely SW ED-90 DS Pro - I love that thing! Light, sharp). It was just the thin cloud, I am 99.9% sure. The thing is that my wife's Quark degraded over time and is now much worse on proms than it was before. So I wondered if the same had happened to mine. Thankfully, not. Phew! My Quark is far from perfect, but it's a lot better than nothing.