The Sun 3-5-08

Poor seeing this morning with a high milky cloud layer, but this was clearing by 2pm. The main "filaprom" prominence was still there today with some other flare and flame prominences developing on the west limb. I decided to try out the Baader Microstage adapter to see if I could reduce hand shake in the compact digital images with the Canon Powerhot A80. It takes quite a while to get the sun centred on the LCD screen with adjustments to the platform position. The eyepiece centering is also made difficult by the requirement for different zoom positions with different eyepieces. Still, a bit of trial and error and eventually it was working OK. Some of the images are certainly sharper with this method of mounting, but others were oddly out of focus even though the camera was not moving and the 10 sec delay timer was on. Overall it is probably worth trying to use this setup more, particularly with the 6.5mm EP which requires shutter speeds of 1/5 to 1/10 sec to capture detail.