Arcturus2013

I have two telescopes. I don't believe either are particularly suitable, one is a Celestron PowerSeeker 70AZ telescope (70 mm f/10) and well the other I will never use for the Sun as it's an open tube dob. Thanks for the advice about all metal scopes though. I have to admit Baader film was particularly useful today for the eclipse especially for photography and possibly less impacted by clouds. That said I'll still think about solar projection some more.

Hello @Marfa, and welcome to SGL.

I probably should have mentioned that I have used Baader film, though what concerns me is that it's easily scratched. My thinking was it might be easier not to have to replace the film and I know this is debatable but the idea of a non-direct view of the Sun generally sounds less risky to me. I think I might try and look for a cheep used refractor. I'm not sure how easily I'd be able to tell if the internal parts, focuser or eyepieces are problematic.

How can you tell if a telescope, eyepiece etc is suitable for projection? How long can an unfiltered telescope be pointed directly at the Sun? Before the risk of damaging the scope?

Thank you for the replies, it did help clarify my question. I spoke too soon it's still a rather nice target for binoculars and telescopes. I was able to take these images tonight:

I put a red circle around the object I think to be comet NEOWISE? The image was taken on the 26th ‎July ‎2020 at ‏‎01:08 UTC (02:08 BST) from Leicestershire, England. (The 3 images below are the same image but cropped differently). It's a shame that comet NEOWISE has become more difficult to find, about 72 hours before I took this image it was just about still visible to the naked eye from my location. That said it was still the best and brightest comet I can vividly remember seeing.