As many of you know this is the year of solar max.  I had been toying with the idea of becoming a solar observer ever since visiting an New Jersey Astronmical Association (NJAA) solar picnic last year.  But at the time I was very hesitant to start solar viewing.  The Sun is can be a very dangerous object to view and can not be played with. It is best to repeat what many have said before,   Never View the Sun Directly without the help of a safe solar filter.  Permanent blindness can result.  The lack of pain receptors in the eyes means that permanent damage can happen without knowledge that it is happening.  Yet hours later the damage will become evident.  

When I was a child a scary experience happened when I viewed the sun directly with my Edmund Astroscan.  This was not done intentionally. I was using my scope to look through a big window from inside our house.  The suns light only hit my eye for a fraction of a second, yet I could see a spot in my vision for a few minutes, until thank goodness it disappeared.  That time luck was on my side and my lesson was learned.

Years later after purchasing my 8" SCT (Celestar 8), the thought came to me of buying a solar filter for my scope. Yet the purchase price of sounded to high. This was not really a good argument, I was just hesitant of viewing the sun for safety reasons.   During a NJAA solar picnic one amateur remarked to me that now would be a good time to start viewing the sun before solar max was long gone. So I started toying with the idea of eyepiece projection. But this did not suit my fancy and I did not want to melt the few eyepieces that I had at the time.  Yet solar projection did appeal to me because it was very safe.

Then Sky and Telescope did a review of the Baader Solar Safety film.  The review stated that the material produced a very contrasty image with a dark sky around a yellow sun.  The best part about the material was its price of for a 8*11 inch sheet.  Plus there were many good articles done in the past year on solar filter safety.  From what I gathered from the articles solar viewing was safe as long as it was done in a safe manor and certain precautions were always followed. One of my amateur friends remarked that he had been viewing the sun for the past 20yrs with out incident. Now I really had no reason not to become a solar observer. But I could still imagine my solar filter popping off my scope and blinding me. Yet the filter could designed so it would be screwed into the scope.  I decided to give solar viewing a try.

A call to Astrophysics on Friday produced delivery of my solar filter material by Monday all for the price of only . Using some round cardboard containers, the well written Astrophysics instructions, and a dremel tool, my solar filter came to life after a few hours of work. It was built to be screwed into the mounting holes on my C8, eliminating any possibility of the filter popping off during a viewing session.  

Soon I was viewing the Sun and could not believe my eyes. The detail visible on the sun was incredible. Limb Darkening, Granulation, Facuala, Sunspot penumbrae and umbrae were easily visible. Plus it was constantly changing.  The image was very good and bright. In fact I stopped down my solar filter to half the aperture of the scope to get a dimmer image of the sun. Also experimentation with color filters showed that a yellow color filter greatly enhanced the detail on the Sun, while making atmospheric turbulence barely noticeable.

I was fascinated at how dynamic the sun was. For example, when trying to focus on the setting sun one day, I thought there was dirt on my eyepiece till the realization hit me that a large sunspot had appeared. A quick look at the website Spaceweather.com confirmed my observation that a major grouping had materialized in the past 24hrs on the previously blank sun. I found out that there were many activities that could done with the sun, from counting sunspots to drawing them, or just tracking their journey across the visible solar disk.  There was also some other added bonus like being able to observe the morning sun from my balcony with a cup of coffee in my hand, and for once not having to worry about dew forming on my SCT's corrector plate or getting enough sleep. Ironically once I went to bed early so I could wake up and start viewing the sun. Twice I viewed a satellite crossing the sun about 2hrs before sunset. How could I have been an amateur for so long yet neglected one of the most fascinating astronomical objects available.  For me there was much fun in drawing sunspots. The next day the change in the sunspot group was evident.  One sunspot group that I drew may have been responsible for the Aurora I witnessed from Hillsborough Sept 17th from 820-900 pm, but that's another story.

If you have never viewed the sun with a full aperture solar filter you may want to give it a try also.  
Use a safe solar filter (one that is widely known as safe) over your telescope.
But please remember to follow these steps each time you View the Sun.

1. Make sure your filter is firmly attached to your scope with no possibility of it accidentally falling off.
2. Make sure there is no holes in your filter and that no unfiltered sunlight is passing through.
3. Finder scopes should be capped or removed, the amount of light coming through even a tiny finder is still very dangerous.
4. Do not leave your scope unattended especially when children are present. One tiny hand that pokes a hole in the filter or accidentally removes it could be disastrous to someone's eye.