The Early Bird...

[Littleguy80]

I am not, by nature, an early riser. However, a call from work a little before 6am led to me looking out the window at clear skies. The Sun was now clearing the roof enough to light up the end of the back garden. I wondered if the seeing might be poor with the Sun being low so decided to test the waters with some WL observing. The post lady delivered a Pentax XF Zoom this week. It had a very brief first light in poor conditions. I'd mainly bought it as an H-Alpha eyepiece but decided to test it out in WL too. Using the Equinox 80mm refractor and a TS Optics Herschel Wedge, I got my first views with the zoom. My normal WL eyepiece is a Nagler 3-6mm zoom so the lower power views of the Pentax were immediately quite striking. Really good contrast showing AR2824 off well as one large main spot and some small pores around it. There was really good granulation on display too. I was hugely impressed by the quality of the view. I switched to the Nagler zoom for comparison at the 6mm setting, which is near enough the max setting of the Pentax which goes to 6.5mm. The views were similar with the Pentax having a slight edge in contrast and sharpness to my eye. I then paired the Pentax with a Baader VIP barlow. This combination worked really. I spotted a smaller spot with some nice faculae near limb, another new active region forming perhaps? There was also another region of faculae near the limb on the other side. My youngest daughter, 6 years old, joined me and started to produce various toy food items and drinks for me. I had a good make believe breakfast and several make believe cups of teas!

It was time to switch to Ha observing now. I replaced the Equinox 80 with a Daystar Solar Scout 60mm. While it warmed up, I went inside to make a real cup of tea as the make believe ones, whilst delicious, hadn't quite hit the mark. Prior to the arrival of the Pentax zoom, I'd been using a Baader Hyperion Zoom with the SS60. I have a 25mm TV plossl which gives great views but I disliked the long eye relief when using it with the SS60. I think the eye relief is coming from the barlow built into the SS60. The first views with the Pentax showed some improvement in contrast but more noticeably sharpness over the Baader zoom. I began methodically adjusting the tuning and was really pleased to see contrast noticeably improve as I found the right setting for the Pentax. The SS60 is my first Ha scope so it's difficult to judge quality but I was really impressed with what I could see. Numerous proms, tons of granulation and some really impressive detail in the AR. I found I was reaching somewhere around 10-11mm as the upper limit before the views started to worsen with the increased magnification. Around 85x magnification, not sure if this is about right for a 60mm Ha scope? The views compared favourably with the images on GONG so I was really pleased with all that I could see. Hazy cloud arrived and brought the morning's fun to an end. The early wake up call was well worth it to have such an enjoyable solar session.

My setup from this morning, note the hot dogs ketchup and mustard  

[Roy Challen]

Glad you had good views. I was out early too as my sky was clear. While I waited for the sun to clear a tree, by the time it had, the clouds rolled in🙄.

Edited May 23, 2021 by Roy Challen

[Littleguy80]

27 minutes ago, Roy Challen said:

Glad you had good views. I was out early too as my sky was clear. While I waited for the sun to clear a tree, by the time it had, the clouds rolled in🙄.

Thanks Roy. Sorry to hear you were beaten by the clouds. Fingers crossed it clears out later on for you.