Hi Gang,

The missus and I have been doing white light and Hydrogen alpha solar observing for years and I was curious to see if anyone on this forum does too.

We use a Herschel wedge for our white light observing and Coronado and DayStar equipment for Ha.

Steve

I'd like to get a Coronado scope some day, but do not yet do much of any solar observing beyond the occasional unmagnified peek through a #12 or #14 (?) welding filter at a particularly large sunspot or group of spots.

A few years ago I had bought a simple mylar (?) filter for a small ETX-60 (?) scope, but lately I've had problems focusing it and haven't had the time to futz with it to figure out why.

I will be going out west for the August eclipse, but will probably just watch through a filter or eclipse glasses.

It was always intriguing to me, but I'm too stingy to spend the money needed to get a really good solar telescope.

With my luck, if I did the sun would immediately plunge into a period of inactivity which would make the Maunder Minimum look like blazing activity.

Have you tried Calcium as well as Hydrogen Alpha?

Any chance you could post some photos?

We're heading south for the eclipse and praying for a clear day!

I'm not familiar with the ETX-60 but looking at a photo of it indicates that it has an internal focusing mechanism. That could be tricky to repair yourself.

I haven't tried Calcium observing yet but the new Quark H-Line looks interesting.

It is depressing when the sun is inactive!

Our smallest Ha scope is a doublestacked PST and it is nothing short of incredible. It puts up ultrahigh contrast views and only falls short of our 150mm scope in resolution.

My AP skills are terrible but I have tried some video stacking that pale in comparison to what some people are capable of.
Sun in Hydrogen alpha