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Model: lunt_sol_searcherPart Number: SSF-1006
“I can’t find the Sun!” Sounds funny. However, the Sun is tricky to find in a properly filtered telescope, and you don’t ever want to chance a direct gaze, let alone a magnified image of it.
Sol-Searcher provides safe and easy way to find the Sun. It is absolutely safe since you don’t look through Sol-Searcher, you look at it. The aperture acts as a 'pinhole' which projects an image of the Sun on to the 1/4″ translucent screen. This screen can be viewed from either side. Simply move your scope until the Sun’s image is centered on the screen and the Sun will be in the eyepiece’s field of view.
There was one of these on a Lunt I borrowed in the past, it's s great plastic finder - very nice Televue quality. I bought this one for my Borg so I need to make my own mount adaptor to fit the spacing and thread of the 3/16" UNF supplied bolts, and I had to machine the finder base itself. So it's a fair bit of work to get this to fit on a scope that isn't a Lunt but still well worth the effort. I had got pretty fed up with trying to find the sun without going blind! Even when it's way off you can still see the sun projected onto the black disc. Once I get the sun centred in the eyepiece or on screen by the old fashioned time consuming method (of getting lucky!) I then adjusted the position of the finder to centre it on the transparent screen. From then on - no more guesswork and only facing away from the sun to look at the finder. Recommended.
The Sol Searcher is an excellent tool to assist in accurately aligning your telescope on the sun. Importantly you can align the telescope with your back to the sun thereby obviating the need to look towards the sun that other sun finders rely on. This is a vital safety consideration given that looking directly at the sun is extremely dangerous.
Excellent Sun sight. Neat and well made. All it needs is sunshine just what we all want. Fast delivery and prompt and efficient service.
Probably the cheapest thing I have bought off FLO but it makes such a big difference to my solar observing.No more trying to line up by eye, sometimes taking minutes!I can now be pointing right at the sun in 5 seconds!Fits perfectly on my Lunt 50mm
A useful addition. The Sol Searcher casts a bright disc on the black border (on the sun side) if the setup is way off.The hole casts a bright disc on the white screen that's visible from either side if the setup is about right.When centred on the screen and an EP zoomed out there is a 100% chance that the scope is aligned.Initial alignment of the Tele Vue Sol Searcher can be done using the shadow of the lens hood on the clamshell...On each side, there should be an even shadow - mine is about 4mm. The four Allen bolts and key make it easy to adjust and lock down.The Sol Searcher is not completely essential but it makes the process much easier and isn't too costly...Interestingly, on the Lunt website, it says many of the scopes now come with the Tele Vue Sol Searcher included.
Got mine mounted on the Tele Vue 3" Clamshell. Tried a few different solar finders and find this style the best.
Perfect fit for my Lunt LS80T.
I have one of these on my Lunt LS50THa. When I took it out of the box I was very skeptical about how it would perform but I must say that it is the easiest finder I have used in either daylight or darkness.If you enjoy solar observing you need one of these in your life.