First light with Daystar SS60

[catburglar]

Received my Daystar SS60 from FLO on Friday and had a chance to get first light with it today.

There was a bit of thin cloud but with patches of clear blue between- so thought I'd give it a quick try.

Paired it up with a SW Heritage Virtuoso mount, Amazon Basics (badged Ravelli) tripod and a SW dielectric diagonal. I plugged the power pack in to the SS60 before heading outside. I pointed the OTA roughly North and set altitude to 53 degrees and switched on to get the tracking going and then swung around to the general direction of the sun.  Bag inside to get the eypeice case, popped in a 25mm plossl and within 30 seconds had my first ever view of the H-alpha sun. The bullet finder, though small made it easy to find the target and the eyepiece gave a nice full disk view with plenty of dark sky around it, so it didn't matter if the tracking was slightly off.

I waited  a few more minutes for the etalon to get up to temperature  and then set about "observing"... but that's when it started to get a bit tricky.

Focusing was much more difficult than I thought it would be.....the helical focuser is a little stiff but the main issue was that there was almost no detail to focus on....tweaking the etalon temp up / down didn't seem to make a great deal of difference.....I was a little underwhelmed- but then again- we're only just past solar minimum., so perhaps I need to be patient.....

Then I noticed a small prominence at the limb around the 1 o'clock position (not sure of my solar orientation yet), so I moved that to centre of the view and tweaked focus on it- to say I was chuffed is a bit of an understatement.... there were bits of cloud moving through the view so the detail was coming and going, but when the cloud cleared I could see real structure in the prominence- and it had only taken about 15 minutes from noticing that the early morning clouds were clearing until I was able to be outside taking in the view.

After a few minutes with the 25mm plossl, I realised I was finding it quite tricky to hold a clear view- I sometimes get blackout issues  using the same eyepiece at night, but it seemed much trickier in daylight. I thought I'd up the magnification and popped in a 10mm BCO....this was much easier to use, a few seconds finding focus again and there I was, back on target and able to see the appearance of the prominence change almost minute by minute....sometimes it was a wall of vertical streamers rising up from the limb and a few minutes later there were "holes" in it and the outer edge was more feathered.....

Tried upping the power again with a 7mm Fujiyama HD ortho but this dimmed the view a bit and didn't seem to add much detail, so I switched back to the 10mm.

Then I took a tour of the limb to see if there was anything else of note- at times it looked like there were tiny "spicules" radiating out from the limb but they seemed to come and go, so not sure if I was imaging them or if they were real.....I also got hints of solar granulation towards the limb, but couldn't see it towards the centre of the disk, so again might have been imagining it.

There wasn't a lot else to see today, but I think I've learnt a couple of important things and also got a few questions.

1. The detail that's available is much more subtle than I'd expected. I assumed because there's so much light on offer, that it would be easy to detect, but the brightness difference between the disk and the prominence means you have to work reasonably hard to get the most from it- and I quite like that.

2. I'd expected granulation to be more evident- perhaps it's just I need to get my eye in- but the fact that I could see or suspect it more at the limb makes me wonder if the central portion of the disk is just a bit too bright.....does anybody use a polarising or neutral density filter for H-alpha?

3. I thought that the seeing might be a bigger problem than it turned out...I've got a south facing patio, but setting up so I viewed over the lawn and then out onto open fields seemed OK. It wasn't the hottest day today, but with the 25mm (approx 37x) the view was sharp and very little shimmer was seen and even at 93x with the 10mm BCO the view was mostly steady with just a bit of shimmer at the limb.

4. The eye relief of the plossl was a bit too much and seemed to make it quite difficult- I thought this would be my "go to" eyepiece. I tried a light shroud which helped a bit, but I'll need to think again. The 10mm was nice, but the narrow field of view meant I couldn't get a whole disk view...So any opinions for optimum eyepiece- thinking that a 9 or 10mm - 60-68 degree eyepiece should give me enough magnification to see the details and still enough field to get the full disk.....

Overall, this was a great first light for me.....I'm happy to cut my teeth when there's not too much going one, and can't wait to get out again to get a little more experience under my belt.

 

 

[laudropb]

Congratulations on a successful first light with your Ha scope. We had clear skies here all day so I managed a good session with my Lunt scope. Unfortunately the seeing was not great, but better than nothing. The prom you saw was very active throughout the day and provided a good start for you. I does take a little time and practice to get your eye in. There were a couple of other proms visible but the were small and not spectacular. With the Lunt scope I sometimes have to change the pressure settings of the etalon to get good views of the surface details. To be honest the was very little showing on the surface today. When there are some good filaments or active regionals it will be easier to get your eye in.