Amateur Astronomy For Beginners: Solar Safety

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1. Your videos have fueled my original desire to get into amateur astronomy. Buying my first telescope soon, a reflector. One question, it's winter and temperatures are often below zero... are there any precautions needed for low temperatures? Greetings from Serbia :)
2. Do it safely and responsibly and you wont ruin your astronomy hobby for a lifetime. :-) Thanks for watching!
3. Well, I am thinking of buying a 200/1200 DOB and you scared me into really watching out for the sun :D Good job !
4. 1srryham thank you for the response. i only wish i could afford such setup;s I've been satisfied with my standard views on a 10' dob and solar filter, its still verying interesting to me. Even without the detail of the higher end optics thank you though for the info, had no idea idea about the CME and the bands in filters
5. @bottle2lip CMEs are only visible with special coronagraphs. You can see solar flares and prominences which sometimes do trigger CME's, but only if you use very expensive Hydrogen-alpha narrow-band solar filters (prices start at several thousand dollars). The best way to view the sun in H-alpha is using a dedicated solar telescope like the Coronado PST ("Personal Solar Telescope). 
6. I think you would definitely be safe with an Orion glass solar filter.
7. An H-Alpha filter can be used to observer solar activity such as prominances. I am not sure if they can pick up a CME like the ones you see in the SOHO data. I think you may be able to observe flare activity with it. There are also radio methods cheap enough and available through NASA that can be used to observer solar activity. There are a ton of resources online that one can use to readily view solar data from numerous satellites. Some data is even updated once per minute live.
8. thanks for the speedy response trumartian I plan to pick up the orion glass solar filter. I assume the quality will be fine. what about CME ejections? what does one need to observe that? I would imagine some other sort of filters or only seen when using a CCD or some imaging setup?
9. You will most defininetly be able to see sunspots. Don't be disappointed if you don't see anything at first. Sunspots come and go and they come big and small. Be patient, we are coming out of a long solar minimum with very little activity. You never know what the sun will do next. Make sure you buy a PROPER solar filter. Spare no expense to protect your vision. If you want a preview of what you might see on the sun go to the SOHO web site and look at the MDI image. This is what you will see.
10. i want to pick on up for my 8 inch dob when funds are right. It seems exciting to me to view the sun. Will you be able to discern sunspots? or will it just be a white disc?
11. great video love the ending
12. Great things! Thanks. I went thru your playlist. Loved them all. I took a class at junior college in astronomy . It was not a mickey tho, it took some work to comprehed what in the world, (;-)) they were talking about. Would you recommend a class like that Astronomy 101, to your fans? The text came with a CD of the sky which I loaded on to my computer. I think you would be a great professor or high school teacher. Thanks, again. All 5 stars for your efforts. Ray-
13. I own the Orion SkyQuest XT4.5. If the larger SkyQuests are anything like the XT4.5 then I think you will do just fine. I know a couple of my viewers who own larger SkyQuests and love them. To my knowlege Orion is the only company manufacturing dobs of this class and size. Seems Meade dosent make anything less than a 12 these days which is a disappointment.
14. Meade telescopes are pretty low grade consumer telescopes. I'd go with celestron unless you want to throw down to have your mirror redone. I used to work for a mirror grinder here on the west coast, you'd be surprised how many Meade mirrors we'd get in to be reground due to terrible TERRIBLE quality under parabolic inspection.
15. Yes I have an older model Meade 10 inch Starfinder. I dont think Meade makes this model anymore. As a matter of fact I dont think they make anything smaller than a 12 these days. The latest Meade offering comperable to the Starfinder is the Lightbridge series. These are truss designs. The nearest thing to a Meade Starfinder would be the Orion SkyQuest XT10. I am of the opinion that Meade and Orion are pretty much equal in quality for the most part when it comes to dobs.
16. great stuff
17. Always informative stuff!