Herm

In all the chatter I did not mention this is not a bad shot through the eyepiece. I had to work this morning so I was not able to setup the scope and get some shots. A flying friend of mine has a nice thousand oaks solar filter an got a nice shot. I did get to have a quick look with my solar glasses.. Pretty cool indeed. It's a great hobby, but can get a little expensive ( like flying). The gear available these days allows us to do things that even the largest research scopes could not do even 15 years ago. Thanks for sharing your image Mardy

Dear Mr Re-incarnated I guess you must be correct and I have made an awfull mistake. As soon as I put out the fire in my telescope and my left eye heals I will contact Meade, Celestron, Orion and others that they must stop producing thier products as a guy on these forums thinks they may cause fires, and damage your eyes. I am sure all the folks at the Astronomical Society have no idea of the danger they are in. All those scopes setup with cameras doing Afocal photos need to be stopped. I would hate to see all those nice big 16" mirrors getting damage, and CCD's being destroyed. In fact it might also be good to advise those using solar glasses to not use those also. I know that Meade produce a PST scope (personal solar Telescope) that has HA filters for the purpose of viewing the sun with your eyes. We may need to contact them about this problem that you have brought to light... Very Bright Light. but on a more serious note, yes you can use the reflecting onto a white card and that is a good safe way for those that dont have the correct gear to do the solar stuff, or use a pinhole box with a white reflector. I guess if you wish to use that method to view the sun, it's sure is a safe way of doing it. However an opinion of what is safe or not, or what you think is not able to be done, should not be implicated as fact. Thier are lots of options and products these days for sun viewing and it's changing every day and some good stuff now on the market. Get on the Google and look at what you can see with your eyes with a solar scope...Amazing (getting one soon). You might even want one when you see them. You can now add these HA filters to normal scopes. Not cheap but fantastic all the same. did you knopw I was a model in my past life. But trust me, you would never guess if you saw me in this life. Anyway all a bit off topic for this site. Anyway you did get me to post one more time. Mardy

I wasnt going to post anymore on this site, but this subject is something I spend lots of time doing.. Your comment is not really correct. Heat from the sun will not damage anything on a telescope at all. Most telescopes you a reflected or refracted image transfer to your eye. You are able to get fantastic views of the sun using the correct filters. Baader Film of HA filters. Place a camera on the end and great pictures can be taken. It is common place to look at the Sun with a telescope and its really neat to see the sun spots and Prominence.. You can even purchase whats called a PST Telescope that is only used to view the sun.. Its really that same as looking at the sun with you naked eye... Thats what we all know NOT TO DO without special glasses (Baader Film). Same rule applies for all other viewing with Bynos or Telescopes.. I have posted this link before, but I have a Website that has a few sun images as well as Deep Space shots and Aurora Shots I took in Alaska last year.. http://scopepics.wordpress.com Mardy

Wow... he must of spend the best part of every day playing with his balls!