Solar Astronomy

Xanadu Observatory is now capable of 24-hour astronomy, with the addition of a Lunt LS100THa Solar Telescope.  This scope allows direct observation of the nearest star.  It's a refractor with a special tuning and filtering system to allow transmission of only a very slight amount of the sun's light.  Normally, one would go blind from looking at the sun, but this scope makes it safe.
In reality, I probably will not use the solar scope inside the observatory much.  I've painted the inside of Xanadu black, which is great for nighttime observing but makes it an oven in the day.  I've got some learning to do to get the most out of this scope, and I'm planning to image through it eventually.  Even with the drastically reduced amount of light that passes through the filter, imaging the sun will be a much different process than normal astroimaging.  The quantity of light reaching the camera will still be far greater, and also the sun exhibits dynamic short-term activity, so one big difference will be taking shorter exposures.