Rusted

Today, I am mostly a martyr to thin, high cloud and thermal agitation of the image. A 2.6x GPC suggests modestly better seeing than the deplorable average.

Very crisp!

Thanks Stu. You have just helped to explain why my solar imaging camera is tilted one way in the morning and the other way in the evening. Now I'm trying to discover how I can pre-set the camera's "uprightness" more accurately by using crosshairs in SharpCap. If I can use a feature on the sun to closely follow the line of the crosshairs, using the drive paddle, will this ensure I have the correct camera "tilt?"

A naked circular saw and a bent twist drill remind us all how we only survived DIY telescope making by the skin of our teeth!

Fine mages. The Sun's surface, in white light close-ups, looks remarkably similar to human skin. Which leaves one trying to avoid the likely meaning of the "nasty spots" in this context.

A thoughtful design.

Warm and very cloudy. My first images were the best so far today. A remarkable chain of filaments was climbing towards the NE limb. I used a 912x912 frame in SharpCap to keep everything in view.

These were the very last captures as the trees gobbled up my sun: The detail is even better, than earlier, without the need to over-sharpen.

Nice images! That's much harder to achieve than many realise!

Well done! Nice, even images. It is very difficult to capture both surface and proms because of their very different, relative brightness. I believe the experts capture one image of each and then blend them together in post processing, laying one over the other. It is only rarely that I see proms and surface detail simultaneously. It always needs much more gain to bring out the proms. Which badly overexposes the surface detail. Making it appear plain white in a mono camera. Edit: Your proms are certainly there but you final image wasn't bright enough to bring them out. Here I have adjusted your image slightly to make it brighter and to increase the contrast. The proms are now visible without drowning them in a brighter sky. Image 2 is cropped for more scale and massaged a bit more aggressively.

Another sunny day with only a little, high cloud. Warm but breezy. 2.6x GPC and 700x700 frame for more scale without cropping.

FMA: ARE YOU USING A SOLAR FILTER?

Superb set!

I think you could get away with drilling, tapping and fitting a grub screw in the hub. Probably slanting? Askew? Inclined? To bed onto the flat on the motor shaft. A coarse thread might be best. Metric is too fine to have much meat to bite into. Your worn tires remind me how the solid variety used to look in my youth. You've been using the back brake too much.

Here you go: It weighs a ton! Far too top heavy to move safely. I needed mobility because of the trees, high hedges and shrubs. Don't use pneumatic tires for a pier! I bought replacement, puncture free wheels, for sack trucks. Hard, solid rubber. The jacks are from standard, pilot wheels for car trailers. That's my DIY, 7" f/12 R35, iStar refractor aboard the MkIV.

Still struggling with plates of cloud but the gaps are clear and transparent:

I have been struggling with plates of cloud. Then the seeing improved. 2.6x GPC and a custom frame size in SharpCap. 600x700.

I have an update: With apologies to the OP for blatant hijacking of his thread. The information is still relevant however. First I tried odourless paraffin [lamp oil], then cleaning benzine [petrol] and finally acetone. Hoping to find a solvent for the thickened grease in my Optolyth 8x56 binoculars. The first two seemed to do nothing when applied with a small, [cheap] water colour brush to the hinge joints. While the acetone took some time but eventually freed up the hinge as I flexed the hinge back and forth. I then used acetone on a clean rag to clean off the disassembled focuser and eyepiece components. This still took some time before the rubbery grease began to stain the rag brown. The binoculars are now functional after years of remaining unused. Sadly I am now [probably] too old to enjoy their 7mm exit pupil. The image appears bright and sharp but not up to the standard of my Nikon Monarch 5 8x42s. Which is both much brighter, much sharper, very much lighter, more relaxing to use and has a much larger field of view. The Monarch 5s are also so light that I walk for hours with them around my neck. BTW: I sewed the long strap tails to the inside of the original traps, from new, to save them dangling. As a wildlife enthusiast I prefer a short strap with my binos high on my chest. This saves them bouncing or getting in the way.

Forget about concrete. My avatar shows my wheeled pier. Far too heavy to lift even without the Fullerscopes MkIV on top.

Adding artificial colouring often turns the umbra of sunspots brown.

It is definitely a spot but the seeing is too soft for an art work.

Many thanks. I bought them from a flea market for not much money. Because, as I pointed out, the hinge wouldn't move nor would they focus. I can only assume they had been baking in hot sunshine for years. So the solvents [?] in the grease had evaporated. Just a guess.

Off topic [as usual] but I could do with a solvent for the hardened grease in my pair of Optolyth 8x56 [rubber armoured] binoculars.

Don't ever look through any top name brand or you will be disappointed by any other purchase. Top names only got there by years of research and refinement. They are sold on word of mouth recommendation by respected, fellow bird spotters. I used my battered old, Vixen 90mm f/11 achromat as my minimum optical standard. [with Baader 1.25" erecting prism and Meade 4000 EPs used in all light conditions up to several hundred yards] It was a real eye opener when I compared it to some expensive spotting scopes. Including a Zeiss 70mm zoom and the top model of a 85mm US range raved about by US hunters on YT. Zoom in to check how dim and soft you can personally tolerate from your first choice. Then keep on looking until you wonder how many vital organs really need..

Outstanding results! Thanks for sharing.