Added a new astrophotograph to my album. Thanks to my new more portable telescope MEADE ETX-80 ($210), I can now easily set it up at night or even in my room to get a quick glimpse of the Sun. The only slight unfortunate event was I was too careless as to how much the Sun's heat could become under such convergence and when I realized that the internal Barlow was stuck, I quickly stopped and detect the burnt rubbery to confirm what had happened.
Good thing after cooling down for a bit, I could flip the Barlow lens on and off but I do have to push the lens directly off the view inside-not too much trouble, just now I have to deal with it...perhaps the whole mechanism would still be fixable by time or some oil treatment but I shall handle that in the future.
Did a comparison with SOHO's latest solar take, Sunspots seem different than mine. Now I would like to know how fast Sun spots move/change.
Tempting to get a solar filter for a more direct view, but I'm still a bit cowardly paranoid of direct eye contact and those filters ain't cheap. So I'd just stick with wall projection with the scope for now.
Sunspots activity was so dormant, practically non-existence in the past few years that having to witness them on my first try at solar projection is rather exciting.
