10/02/2011. OK, that was exciting. I went out to take a photo of the Sun, got one of active region 11302 in the can, and then spent 2 minutes scanning the rest of the Sun for something worth shooting. Fortunately, I found little to linger over. When I got back to the active region, a very bright flare was in progress. I shot 12 video clips as it developed and faded. In one of them, the flare changes from a single loop to a double loop of brilliant plasma in the 20s between start- and stop-recording. I haven't decided how best to present the images from nothing-to-see-here to full-on M1.4 flare to fading hot spots. The show lasted about 8 minutes and I was grabbing and saving 300 frame clips from the time I saw it until I thought the show was mostly over. I'm not going to post 4GB of AVI video. It's going to take some time to do this justice. In the meantime, this...

10/03/2011. A very steady few minutes let me get this photo of tall prominences and a tiny sunspot with a crown of low-level (~B6) flares (AR 11308). The prominence clip has about 30x the exposure of the disk clip (60ms @ 17db gain vs 4.8ms @ 12db), both reduced in AviStack 2, then wavelets in Registax 6, then Focus Magic as a plugin to Photoshop. Everybody needs a hobby and solar photography counts as about five.

And farewell to AR11302 as it retreats toward the limb throwing one last flare, followed by two tiny active regions -- not quite Earth-sized -- and their feeble, million megaton sparks:

Lunt Solar Systems LS60THa50DS, PGR Chameleon, 300 frames at 15fps, 4.8ms, 12db, carried on a Meade LXD55 equatorial mount.

10/14/2011. Disaster! I uncovered the Ritchey so it could dry out for tonight and draped the cover over the solar telescope to keep it off the ground. Apparently, the solar 'scope on its tripod and Meade LX55 was close to tipping down the hill in the first place. When I went outside an hour or two later to check on the deep-sky kit's readiness, I saw the solar outfit tipped over. The scope cover had acted like a sail and a sharp gust had taken the kit to the ground. I'm thinking the DS50F has a decontacted etalon -- I can't get focus with it in place, and the view through the blocking filter is not of red solar images but a series of red lines. The single-etalon 'scope works just fine. I emailed Lunt about repairs for the LS50F.

Above are a fair representation of the view through the double-stacked Lunt and B600 blocking filter after the accident without a camera or eyepiece and a photo of the Sun made with the decontacted external etalon. Note the odd patches of short dark lines in the photo. And don't compare it to the photos at the top of this page. Too painful.

Rikki Hokking got back to me via email very quickly on Friday afternoon to confirm that my diagnosis was probably correct and to say that Lunt could more or less routinely recontact the etalon. Expect it to take a couple of weeks and cost about $250, said she. That's both faster and less expensive than I expected, and far faster and less expensive than I feared. The filter left for Tucson Monday morning (10/17) via Priority Mail. More when I know more.

11/3/2011: To Tucson and Back Again. The Lunt is home, just in time to try it out before losing the Sun into haze and the treetops. Works! I'm not sure that I can get as uniform a solar image as I enjoyed before the accident, but the on-band detail is superb, maybe better than before. I'll need more time to discover any significant differences. In the meantime: I again have those lovely high-contrast views of chromospheric fireworks. ($40 roundtrip shipping, $250 to recontact the etalon.)

11/5/2011. Back under the Sun Act1ve Region 1339.

Active Region 1339
Lunt LS60THa50DS