The weather was nice and the sky was clear, so I wanted to get out to image the Sun today. This was precipitated by my scan of spaceweather.com, which indicated that a lot of sunspots were visible today and Astrospheric, which showed pretty good conditions for imaging as the Sun approached the meridian.

The mount was already polar aligned, although probably off a little due to settling since I last used it and had near perfect tracking without guiding when I shot the moon a few days ago. I added the TV, 2x PowerMate and the 60Da. Set up and prep for use went well.

Conditions were great! When I began working at 1200, there was no discernable breeze, and the temperature was 85F. The sky was completely cloudless. Astropheric was reporting 0% cloud cover, below average transparency, and above average seeing.

The sun was visible in the camera display at the end of the initial slew. I needed to put a longer extension between the 2x PM and the camera in order to achieve focus. Good seeing aided focus as sunspots appeared very steady in the display. I began an imaging run of 75 frames at 100 ISO and 1/500s at 1220.

The temperature was still 85F when I concluded the session at 1235.

All equipment and activities at the scope went flawlessly.

This was a fast and fun session.