Coronado PSTâ„¢ (Personal Solar Telescope)

Coronado have announced a new 40mm <1.0A H-Alpha telescope - the Coronado PSTâ„¢ (Personal Solar Telescope)

www.optcorp.com/cart/ProductDetail.asp?PR_ProductID=3110

Cost = $499 which is approx €410...not bad!

Michael

Nice one Michael, good hunting indeed and with a price to suit, wonder what's with the 18mm"solar eyepiece"
And the Euro at 1.21 to the Dollar it makes perfect sense to shop in the USA
Charles

Charles,

The 18mm "solar eyepiece" is, from my understanding, a Coronado Ceemax eyepiece which is "optimised for H-alpha light". However, S&T tested these eyepieces and were unable to differenciate them from other good-quality Plossls...

With the bandwidth at 1A it's not as narrow a band as the Solarmax 40. It may be designed more for viewing prominces than surface detail. For those who have viewed through the Solarmax 40 at Birr and Tullamore, the image in the PST I reckon should be a little brighter and may show better detail in the prominces as they will be brighter. However, this will come at a cost to the surface detail. However, as it's objective lens is 40mm (less than 2inch) it's limited in resolving fine detail and applying magnification on the surface anyway. This may explain why Coronado have released larger aperatures (up to 90mm) albeit at a much higher cost.

It'd be interesting to see what the views in the PST are like considering how reasonable the cost is....(that's a hint for Coroando to send me one for review purposes which I'd only be too glad to post up here)

Michael

hi Michael,

a few of us had a "solar scope shootout" yesterday in Dublin -- clouds frustrated us a bit and then with the Sun so low at this time of year there is only a short period of time that you can do any real observing.

scopes present were;

Coronado Max Scope 70 (that's the one that has been donated by Geraldine Hogan for another planned draw to fund the speakers for future Whirlpool Star Parties. Many thanks for the generous donation Gerry and David).

Coronado 90mm H-Alpha filter set on a Televue 102mm

Coronado 60mm H-Alpha filter set on a 60mm refractor

Solar Scopes 50mm H-Alpha telescope

Orion Shorttube 80mm with a white light solar filter

we were hoping to have had a 40mm Coronado too but that didn't happen.

hope to get a write-up on the event in the next Arcturus. It was pretty neat to see such a gathering of dedicated solar scopes and worth trying again later next year.

John Flannery
SDAS

John,
That's some show-down! Looking forward to the next issue of Arcturus! BTW, who owned the 90mm on the Televue 102...that's some piece of kit!
Michael

hi Michael,

Kevin Berwick, one of the IAS guys, owns that particular setup. I wonder could we get a solar scope session going at the Galway Star Party at the end of January? I'll e-mail all the gang that I know have h-alpha instruments and see if we can get them along.

John
SDAS