Disappointed!

[The Warthog]

And three hearty cheers and a tip of the hat to whomever can remember what actor in what film made "Disappointed!" briefly famous.

I just taped my new Thousand Oaks solar filter over the aperture mask in my scope (The filter is much larger than the hole) and proceeded to look at a featureless orange ball about the size of the moon, for several minutes while I moved the focus in and out, trying to see something that would justify my expenditure. Now I have a headache, and what I hoped would be a new adventure in astronomy has justified all my doubts. There is, apparently, one small sunspot, about the size of Mercury, near the centre of the disk but I couldn't see it.

Back to the open clusters!

[Naz]

Oh dear WH, hope Astroman can shed some info on this for you

naz

[radioactive]

with it being very close to sunspot minimum it can really be a hit and miss time for spotting any activity on the sun I did see some sunspots very similar to those on this link at the recent psp2 we went to so its fingers crossed at the present times

http://www.eaas.co.uk/gallery/sun/20060331_sunspots865_866_lisburn_kelly.html

[lunator]

WH

Don't worry too much the Sun is pretty inactivce at present.

It will liven up soon I'm sure.

Cheers

Ian

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Perhaps if you use a higher magnification EP the brightness would reduce? With the Baader stuff I can see a sunspot almost dead centre of the disc. Imaging it is a whole different matter.

Outside into the sun to move the focusser, then back into the shed to look at the laptop - can't see anything for a minute or so, then it obviously needs more adjustment.

Do this again and again and get NO image on the webcam.

You should be able to see the current sunspot, perhaps you need to zoom in a lot more?

I try to acheive focus by looking at the edge of the sun then getting a sharp edge. This doesn't work often as there seem to be days when focussing just doesn't happen, I don't know why.

PRIMER PLEASE!

Captain Chaos

[The Warthog]

I had focused on the limb, and tonight when i took the solar filter off, the stars were in almost perfect focus. Brightness didn't seem to be a factor, much. Oh, well! I don't intend ot make solar viewing a big part of my astronomy - mostly for eclipses, sunspot maxima, and transits. I didn't find it particularly enthralling to see the sun through a PST, the one time I did.

Had a looka t Jpiter tonight, and showed my daughter, who's home for the Easter weekend. I had a few glasses of sherry at the Resurrection Party after Easter Vigil tonight, so I'm not really in the mood. Besides, the transparency isn't good. I had a look at Satrun again, and Castor just to make sure I really had split it before. I had.

I'm going to go out and just gape a little. The transparency's like poo tonight, so I don't expect I'll see much.

Then, with my usual sense of timing, I went out and missed the occultation of Ganymede my seconds. Would have been my first.

[Astroman]

Didn't I write a primer on solar observing already? Basically, the more you look, the more you see. Unless of course, there's nothing to see. Like, now, for instance. There' is a tiny sunspot and a few active regions that may show some mottling, but not much exciting.

Hang on to that filter arrangement though, WH. The Sun will pick up activity again in a couple years and give you a real good show, promise.

[Astroman]

Here's a link to the response I wrote to, "Do you do/like solar observing??" thread/survey. It kinda rambles, but that's just me.

http://stargazerslounge.co.uk/index.php?topic=1940.msg19647#msg19647