The Sun 23-4-09 - First light for the Lunt B1200 CaK

I had just 15 minutes of sun this afternoon to test the new filter and that was shooting through thin hazy cloud low on the horizon too! I was amazed when the image popped up on the laptop and revealed a relatively sharp and detailed surface. I had always thought large apertures played a big part in letting more light and resolution come through in bad seeing and this test proved my theory immediately. The filter was attached to my Vixen 115s APO stopped down to 100mm. With no activity on the suns surface at the moment I wasn't expecting a lot, but even so two areas of plage are showing up, the one on the right clearly has two tiny pores in it and the one on the left may be a new AR rounding the NE limb. The scale of magnification was large to start with due to the 890mm focal length of the Vixen and I doubt I will be needing a barlow very often when solar maximum arrives.