First look at the sun!

I suppose I should really report his here sorry if duplication is VERBOTEN.
After my search for Baader Astrosolar film and constructing the cell mounts here is a copy of my thread from the WANTED section.

Well,
I got my sunny day! I spent two hours on saturday morning from 11:00 to 13:00 checking out the Sun (with lots of distractions from the kids - my wife works weekends, and I manage our 4 wee ones then, nobody was in any danger while I was absent from the scope, just in case Health & Safety man wants to comment). Just as well the Nexstar 102SLT is adept at tracking, I only had to very minor adjust a couple of times over 2 hours to keep the complete disc in the centre of field (i.e 90% of 0.95 degrees TFOV)- well done Celestron. I'd also made a filter cell for my 10x50 binos and this gave excellent results also.
The filter cell I'd made for my scope was bigger than 95mm aperture, and I found this too bright so I made a baffle reducing the aperture down to 50mm. This made viewing a lot more comfortable and brought better contrast. Lesson - Less is more for solar viewing!
A pity we're at a solar minimum, not a hint of a sunspot anywhere, just a clean disc. But at least now I've had a chance to practice for the Eclipse on my birthday on the 29th, and I will take the ensemble into work on the 29th, and hopefully be able generate some interest amongst colleagues. I don't reckon < 20% obscuration will be spectacuar but it might drum up some interest.

Something of interest !!! I'm not one given to wild claims and am generally sceptical on most matters (just ask my wife). BUT!! I turned 40 last year (gettin' old don't ya know) and had noticed a downturn in my, up 'till then better than 20-20 vision, particularly with close up and small print. After viewing today, with plenty of breaks in between, my vision is very improved on close up objects. I was wondering if anybody else has had a similar experience ? Will it last ?

If you ware glasses normally and dont wear them while looking through the scope (as most dont) and you find it improves youir vision, then maybe your glasses are of the wrong strength and causing eyestrain, and you need a eye test ?

BTW, accurate tracking like that is much more down to good polar or 2 star allignment.

Nope don't wear glasses, last eyetest some 4 years back was better than 6-6 (or 20-20 to the old school).

On tracking - I simple set the tracking mode to Solar (Nexstar gives three tracking modes Siderial, Lunar and Solar), leveled the mount, and aligned using the sun - took all of 2 minutes. I also used the new SYNC option on the version 4.10 hand controller but this probably has no effect on tracking, its more of a localised GOTO accuracy improver.