Siegfried had been monitoring list messages when John sent out his alert, and called me from Houston to let me know (Thanks Siegfried!). I rushed around to get the PST set up, ran outside- totally overcast, in just the few minutes it took me to get the scope ready. It took over an hour for the clouds to clear enough for a good view. It was worth the wait! Definitely one of the larger prominence complexes I've seen in a long time. Thanks for the alert, John! I snapped a few cell-phone pics and will post a link once I get them downloaded and processed, if they turn out worth a darn. Patrick, glad you and the club are enjoying the Baader filter on Andy. When the seeing is good, there is incredible detail to be seen on the sun even in white light. Eight inches of aperture will let you see quite a bit, so don't be afraid to bump up the power when the sky is steady and zoom right in on a sunspot group. This afternoon was good because the overcast prevented ground heating, so once the sky cleared, there wasn't any (or very little) warm air rising from the surface to ruin the seeing. I run the PST side-by-side on the same mount as an 80mm scope with a 2" Lunt wedge for white-light views. I agree that having both views side-by-side is the most interesting way to view the sun. On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 5:33 PM, Wiggins Patrick <paw@getbeehive.net> wrote:
Yes! Very nice indeed.
Since I have white light and Ha scopes mounted on the same mount I took a moment to compare the two views.
White light is nice with lots of sunspots (though not nearly as nice as through the Bogdan using Chuck's donated full aperture filter - which now has me very spoiled.).
But then to the eyepiece of the Ha and such a contrast. It's funny how much can be going on right under our noses (or eyeballs in this case) and we never know it.
For those unable to view in Ha today find current Ha views of the Sun here: http://halpha.nso.edu
patrick
On 23 Apr 2015, at 11:21, John M. Craig <jmcraig@xmission.com> wrote:
This has got to be the largest prominence complex I've ever seen. If you have the gear, be sure to take a look. It looks like a forest and is maybe 1/10 solar diameter at its highest section. It's spread out along maybe 15 to 20 degrees. The thing is just astoundingly huge. On the leading limb, there's some wispy prominences that reach as far away from the disc.
Definitely worth a look if you have the Ha gear.