I took delivery of a SkyWatcher SolarQuest mount a few days ago from First Light Optics.  At a smidge under £300 I was interested in this due to theadvertised quick and easy setup, ideal for a grab and go mount for solar work for visual and photography.

The mount worked brilliantly straight out of the box.  After putting 8 AA batteries into the drive system and turned on the mount, the in-built GPS worked its marvel and after 30 seconds or so the mount head slewed to the correct alt and azimuth putting sol in the middle of a 20mm eyepiece in my Lunt LS60THa.  The scope weighs in at a little over 3kg, the mount can take a generous 4kg.  The SolarQuest found the sun first time and kept it in the centre of the chip for the hour of the test – I would highly recommend this equipment if you want a grab-and-go solar setup.

I did manage to do some imaging, but I realised when it come to processing the 4 videos I thought I’d taken, I had the camera set to photos not video, so I have 2000 3mb photos to delete.  Here’s a few stills stacked, not much going on, with a few prominences visible.

Thanks for looking.

Steve