The seeing during the day is never diffraction-limited; it's usually a boiling mess. This is the reason seasoned solar observers like to work before the ground heats up, typically before about 10 AM during the warm months of the year. Also why many solar observatories are surrounded by water or at very high altitude. Increased aperture for the amateur rarely, if ever, yields noticeable resolution gains when the air is the determining factor. 50mm of aperture is almost always plenty for the sun. The PST is a great little scope, showing many H-a details. But notice that for just a bit tighter filter bandbass, you have to spend considerably more money. Remember that most set-ups like this need to be "tuned"; the PST has an adjustment for this and sometimes a bit of tweaking will improve the contrast of details immensely. I'll be out at SPOC tonght for a refresher, if I can get out there before sunset, I'll bring my PST for a peek at the sun. On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 9:44 AM, <erikhansen@thebluezone.net> wrote:
One day I was at Vaughn's, who owns a .4 A filter and has an 80mm F30. I brought the clubs .5 A filter and the 50mm F30. We switched the filters between scopes, the .4 on the 50mm clearly out preformed the .5 on the 80mm. It also seemed to me the performance of the .4 was the same on the 50mm vs the 80mm. Vaughn also agreed.
It is hard to imagine that 1x more mag would make any difference is resolution, in white light. Another 10x seems like it would.