Open tonight but no minors without parents Tuesday at 9pm

Our teacher contact won't be at the observatory tonight. So this is not a kid night.

The observatory will be open to adults from facc and residents but children must be accompanied by their parent to enter or observe.

Btw about fifty kids observed the sun today through a special telescope designed especially for solar viewing. These kinds of telescopes are usually build with the designed purpose to view the sun.

Always consult with an experienced astronomer before viewing the sun, because some think you can use filters to view the sun with ,but choose filters that are unsafe. Even experienced astronomers have been known to make mistakes at times so it's a good thing to ask questions and be aware of how their setup works. For example they must have safe and undamaged filters designed for solar viewing. Some filters require two sets of filters, on on the front and others on the eyepiece assembly. All safe setups require a special filter on the large opening or front top end of the telescope. It's also important that the astronomer have a setup that holds the filters son the telescope firmly with tape, Velcro or in some cases a screwed on filter inside a special solar telescope. The old telescopes from 30 years ago had small filters on the eyepieces. These were not safe and should never be used. These old sun filters that were eyepiece only filters sold with some store bought telescopes should be destroyed and thrown away.

Also : Don't use welding glasses to look at the sun.

Last night a visitor mentioned using a type of filter which he thought would be safe, but he was wrong. Don't risk your eyesight to an unsafe or questionable setup. Better to be safe than sorry.

You best bet is to avoid looking at the sun and keep your eyesight.

There are some telescopes build for looking at the sun like Pst telescopes by Orion, or Lunt solar scopes. The observatory has a Lunt solar scope. There are some safe filters that can be bought as well. These are normally made by companies like bader or thousand oaks. Sometimes an old solar filter is damaged and unsafe. I bought a telescope that had a used solar filter that was supposed to be safe, but it had a lot of small pin hole flaws in it. To be safe I photographed the sun using a camera and didn't look directly at the sun with it. There were to many holes and it would. Seem to require to many patches for this White light solar filter to be considered safe. Rather than risk my eyes I decided to set it aside. The white light solar filters cost 70 to 120 dollars for a large filter to put on the objective, large end of the telescope. I'd rather spend the money to get a new white light solar filter than risk my eyes.

Hydrogen alpha solar scopes like the Lunt that we have show other features and are probably nicer to look through. These cost 500 dollars or more. You could spend thousands of dollars on a hydrogen alpha setup. If your into astronomy and want to look at the sun that's a nice but pricey investment. If your in the area you can save money and check out the sun by visiting us when we have e observatory open to the public for solar viewing. This would normally be on some weekend. We haven't had a solar viewing day yet this year, but will be having them soon.

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