First light CaK

I've been curious if my eyes could get anything out of CaK visually, and Michael was kind enough to give a lend of his PST CaK, so I gave it a go today.

With a 20mm eyepiece, just putting my eye up to it, I couldn't make out anything at all.

With a black fleece thrown over my head, I could see the image well enough to get the sun centered. But not well enough to focus.

With the black fleece pulled in tight around my face, and perhaps 5 minutes to dark adapt, I could see it well enough to focus. But still no detail.

I also tried a 12.5mm eyepiece with a bellows eyecup. Much better image scale, but even dimmer image. I needed the bellows and the black fleece to get a decent view, and still no detail.

Now, there might not have been any detail today to see, so I'll give it another go. But, for someone who enjoys astronomy partly for the relaxation, this doesn't really look like it's headed in the right direction.

Cheers,
-- Jeff.

It wasn't cloudy at the time by any chance was it Jeff?

I can see a purple disc alright albeit dimmer than the view in the Ha scope. When a spot is visible in white light, a *tiny* change in the shade of purple is visible at that location in the PST Cak scope. My wife Denise however can make out the granulation-like effect in Cak which can normally be seen in the Ha scope. Guess it varies from person to person. I would be interesting to know if your children could see anything. Their younger eyes might be able to see more.

Michael.

Michael --

Yeah, I'm also curious to see if the girls see more, although I think their relative lack of experience looking through an eyepiece may erode most of their age-related advantage.

Dee also mentioned that females had better odds at high frequency. Sounds like I'm striking out all around.

Cheers,
-- Jeff.