Seeing was poor late this afternoon. I wish I could get the PST out early in the day but too many things going on. I miss those winter afternoons when the ground was cold and the air was still all day. Even so, there was lots of surface detail. Several active regions, some obvious flocculi, lots of plage. Limb prominences were small but numerous. I spent a few hours trying out different eyepieces and eyepiece-Barlow combinations. In every case, the image was better with a shorter focal length eyepiece than a longer focal length eyepiece and Barlow yielding the same magnification. I'm also finding that long eye relief eyepieces are not a good thing in a solar telescope unless you completely drape your head or have very long eyeguards on the eyepieces. Too much glare reduces contrast, so getting your eye up close to a short focal length eyepiece usually give the better view, in the absence of a deep eye-cup. Wearing my "Smokey Bear" hat helps a lot. I'm getting to know the nuances of the double-stack. I still prefer a single for prominence viewing, at least at the small aperture of the PST. It may be different if you have 80mm of aperture or more. I'll bring the PST to L&O tomorrow if it's clear, and we'll do some solar observing in the parking lot of the Left Fork after lunch, if anyone is interested.
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Chuck Hards