Let's observe THE SUN! SolarMax II Unboxing and First Light

I got a dedicated solar telescope! The Solarmax II 90mm Double Stack, bought straight from Teleskop Express in Germany! Let's have a look at it, the accessories, and try to have a first light!
My Instagram: / cuivlazygeek
My Facebook page: / cuivlazygeek

[@jean-louisfaivre9274]

Hello Cuiv, Jolie piéce, félicitation. Tu es bien protégé du soleil avec tes jolie lunettes ;) Bonne continuation j’attend toujours tes vidéos avec impatience. Toujours du bon travail. Cordialement

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

Merci Jean-Louis - mes lunettes de soleil sont en effet magnifiques ;) Merci beaucoup!

[@VisibledarkAstro]

Congrats on the solar telescope! That will be fun. And thanks for the kitty pics... made my morning! lol 🙃

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

Thank you Shawn! I'm almost glad my camera stopped working - cats can be so relaxing hehehe :D Clear Skies!

[@itaialter]

Very cool! I have a simple Baader Solar Film that I use with my 10" Dob (on the dust-cap). Can't wait to see what awesome results you will get using Ha!

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

Hopefully the telescope will work well! Currently the Sun is apparently very, very quiet! Also, hidden behind clouds :( Still, I'm looking forward to it!

[@NeilW210]

Hey Cuiv, congrats on your new purchase. What a beast! I have a Coronado 60mm Ha Etalon and blocking filter that I can attach to my Skywatcher ED80 refractor. I haven't used it for a while as the sun has been very quiet in its minimum. A bit of advice though. Don't expect to see stunning detail straight away. Observing the sun is a bit of a skill. You kind of need to get your eye "Ha adapted" almost in the same way you need to be light adapted at night. The view, especially through a double stack, will be relatively dim. You have to concentrate on the sun for quite a while before you start seeing detail. I'd recommend, silly as it looks, putting a towel or something over your head to reduce the amount of sunlight interfering with your viewing. This will maximize the amount of light getting through to your eye from the scope (and stop your head from getting sunburnt!). You'll have to adjust the rich-tuning lever and dial at the front etalon to see either surface detail or prominences. You can't see both at the same time. And imaging the Sun is a whole new skill set :) . Hopefully we'll start to see more solar activity soon, so enjoy your new toy!

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

Wow, thanks so much for the tips Neil!! This is indeed a new adventure for me - I have used a Daystar Quark Chromo eyepiece in the past, but a real solar telescope is a whole new ball game. OK, so towel over head to be able to concentrate on viewing the sun, that will be my first addition. Thanks so much! Hopefully you and others will be able to help me through my solar adventure!

[@slapastronomy8646]

Congrats on picking up a very nice scope! That double stack 90 will show you a LOT of solar detail.

[@mathiasboehme]

Greetings from Germany. New Equipment is always exciting and it was big fun to see you opening the „black box“ 😸

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

Thanks Mathias! That black box was so huge, much more than I expected!

[@jfn480427]

Congfats Cuiv, you’ll have a lot of fun with it, the curse is worst with me, if I think of imaging on one cloudless day, the curse immediately activates, so funny, very funny!

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

Hahaha, if we could train ourselves to desire cloudy skies, maybe we'd get clear skies? :) I hope we both get clear skies soon!

[@entropytango5348]

Nice, your Solarmax II is bigger than my SolarMax II. Not that I'm competitive. Good video

[@ASTROPLANETES]

i like your glasses !!

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

Thank you! I'll keep using them then :)

[@paths1111]

Enjoyed the video! Hopefully you'll get some breaks in the clouds soon to get a proper look. Can't wait to see what you do with imaging as we start heading into Cycle 25, solar h-alpha imaging is a passion of mine.

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

Wow, excellent to hear - I hope you'll be able to help me with the issues I will encounter when trying to use this for imaging! I'm hoping to see the Sun gradually become more active over the next few years!

[@paths1111]

@@CuivTheLazyGeek Happy to try to answer any questions you may have. Shall I PM you over on CN?

[@Durkan34]

"who wants to see the scope " -. Yeah, yeah, yeah 😲😲😲 😁😁😁

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

Hehehe, minor mistake on my part :D

[@Durkan34]

Yeah, there was an audible gasp at this end... 🤣😂

[@nxu5107]

Cuiv, So you come back from a para gliding trip to chase the sun? Isn't there a greek myth about something similar? Was someone else doing the gliding for you? Surely a lazy geek can't be running the gauntlet? Sorry I have been a bit quiet as I have been trying to get to grips with Microsoft teams for my school. It's ok a bit painful. But we managed to get ir ready for the teachers to teach. There are loop holes for the kids to annoy the teachers. Fun. Anyway why Coronoado and not Lunt? and come on spill the beans, how much did this monster cost you? I have Lunt 60 PT. It's one of my favourite scopes. you don't have to lose any sleep. But your coronado looks a beauty. It looks like it has come from tutankhamun pyramid! Congratulations. I know why some people worship the Sun. It's beautiful isn't it?

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

Hahaha, exactly! It's a defense mechanism, I manage to not go and fly too close to the Sun, and wait until I'm safely back on the ground to observe it! Microsoft Teams sounds annoying... and it is annoying, I see it almost as Bloatware. But I'm glad you're able to turn it into something useful! As for Coronado vs Lunt, to be very honest, if the price was the same I would have gone with Lunt. But because of the release of the SolarMax III, the SolarMax II was much, much cheaper for a bigger aperture. So that's what decided me, simply enough! If you want to know the price, check on Teleskop Service :) And yes, the Sun is beautiful, although very quiet these days...

[@beatriceheinze2294]

I'm curious about the solar images you're going to take with your solar scope :-).

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

You and me both!! I'll see whether I can take some nice, full disk pictures!

[@Miguel_Noppe]

Woot, you didn't waste any time ordering that, how long has it's been that i suggested the Daystar Solarscout 😛 . have fun with it !

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

A few weeks indeed! I hesitated with the Daystar, but then I decided to go all in! I reasoned that I could probably resell a SolarMax for a profit in Japan anyway, if I was disappointed in it, but the Daystar might be more difficult...! Thanks for the suggestion!

[@jamesr7583]

rtfm ftw!

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

Exactly! Sometimes it can be useful :)

[@Patrick_McFadin]

RTFM is so anti-lazy. This pretty much matches my technique. Just go for it until you realize maybe the instructions are important. Maybe. 😂

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

Hahaha, exactly!!! But this time it cost me...! Oh well :) It makes the anticipation even better!

[@Patrick_McFadin]

I make a lot of tech videos for part of my job exactly because nobody wants to read the docs. 10 minute how-to video should be fine right? I’ll tell you what, if I ever get a solarmax 2, I’ll know to extend the draw tube first now! I am anxious to know how well tracking works on something moving as fast as our day star. Are you going to use sharpcap with the auto-tracking built in? Don’t read the docs, just try it. Make sure the camera is rolling.

[@cucubits]

This may be a silly question but what happens if you would try to use "regular" narrowband filter, like an L-Enhance for example which passes Ha and O3 on a "regular" refractor? First assumption is that this would still be too bright so maybe some other solar film would be needed but with that, could surface details be imaged?

[@sandb1867]

Bad idea. The heat from the light cone could quickly cook your filter. Besides, narrowband filters only have a FWHM between 3 to 12nm for H-alpha. To see detail in the chromosphere, you need a bandpass of less than 0.1nm or 1A. A double-stacked H-alpha scope can achieve 0.6A or 0.06nm and reveal excellent disk detail as well as prominences. A solar telescope such as Cuiv's, actually has multiple layers of filtration to achieve the ultranarrow bandpass and eye protection.

[@jplorge]

I want to say it because the sun is our friend but be very careful without the eyes how will you do for your first passion the paraglider? My first passion was the glider, now it's astronomy because health matters a lot (google translation), but I practiced for thirty years so it's good. Always in the sky and under the clouds.

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

Merci Jean-Pierre! Indeed, I will be very careful - and with this dedicated scope, I should indeed be fine. It is hard for me to have two expensive hobbies at once, flying and astronomy :) Clear Skies!

[@whatmattersmost6725]

First... DON'T LOOK AT THE SUN!!!! Oh wait it's OK! I wanted 1 but not sure how to attach a DSLR to it?

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

Yes, maybe I should have been very clear about that! Looking directly at the Sun is a terrible idea, but then I do believe people watching this channel would already! I will be putting my 1600MM on there, I think! It should give me good resolution and full disc coverage - I'll just use an eyepiece tube (which you could do for a DSLR as well, DSLR -> T ring -> T to eyepiece adapter)!

[@grahamwhite75a]

Come on Cuive, you know the other the laziness us astronomers need another quality.....patience.

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

But... I don't want to be patient!! *cries desperately* . But I will try to stay patient :)

[@andyweeks2216]

Cat's eyes nebula with a Solar Filter?

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

Not sure the Cat's Eye Nebula will show much :D But if I had to stare at say, Sauron's Eye, I may indeed want to look at it through this telescope! Or we can just rename the nebula "The kitten's eye nebula". That would be fitting!

[@natswii]

Seems so wrong setting up a scope to look at the sun lol

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

Yes that is very true! It is very stressful too!! But hopefully I'll get some good images, I'll see!