How to Find the Sun

This seems a bit of a strange blog post title, but I was finding it difficult to get my LX200 telescope to actually find and track the sun when I was undertaking some solar observing.

The first time I found the Sun it was by chance, as it’s difficult when you can’t actually look at the Sun or use the viewfinder to locate the Sun.

There are a few different ways to locate the sun, but the reason I really wrote this post is to tell you about the new piece of kit I got for my Birthday for about £20, which now makes finding the Sun really easy.

I have a Sun location file which you can upload to your telescope which allows you to have the location of the Sun in your LX200 handset, you can find it on my downloads page.

I also read somewhere that you can locate the Sun when the reflection of the telescope tripod on the ground is at it’s smallest.

But I purchased the Astro Engineering AC466 item which turns your viewfinder into a solar viewfinder.

All it does is fit over the end of your viewfinder and it’s then tightened via a thumbscrew. It has a hole in one end and cross-hairs at the other end.

All you then need to do is then align the white spot, which is the Sun coming through the small hole onto the cross-hairs and the Sun is centered! Brilliant and easy for around £20.

The AC466 solar finder fits directly over the front of the standard 50mm finder of the type used on Meade®, Celestron, Sky Watcher and many other telescopes.