Some nice solar prominences from lunchtime

Howdy,

I should have been working but that big yellow ball in the sky kept asking for it's photo to be taken

Nice eruptive prom on the eastern limb and a small quiescent prom nearby. Looked real nice in the PST with an 8mm EP (50x). The quiescent one was dim to see using barlows or powermates visually. came out fine with the wemcam & 5x powermate however.



Cheers,

Trev

Hi trev,

Very nice how do you find the pst are they any good. I know some solar scopes can cost mad money. i'm just looking for some input on them.

Hey Carl,

Yep, they're great wee scopes. With only 40mm aperture however they are not good for high magnifications, but anything above 40mm is very very expensive.

One word of warning though. My current PST is the "new" type, i.e. it has the blue objective. They made some changes in this version whereby it is much harder to image with because the eyepiece spacer cannot be removed. It seems to be welded in place or else it's the strongest threadlocker I've come across. The issue is that many webcams will not reach focus without the use of a barlow. I guess they did this to stop people buying them for imaging purposes in order to protect their maxscope 40 sale.

You could get an older type second hand but then there's another issue - the objectives on these versions degrade after a period of time.

I plan on upgrading to a 60mm Coronado filter or a 60mm Isle of Man SolarScope next year if I can raise the funds.

Cheers,

Trev

Very nice Trevor.
Given the choice between a 60mm coronado or a 60mm solarscope, I'd go for the solarscope as it doesn't have a central obstruction, although it is abit more expensive.
I considered getting one of these 60-90mm scopes and the money can only be described as MAD.

Yeah, the solarscope range looks the business. You know, they've been around for quite a while but I have yet to see one of their filters on astromart or astrobuysell. They must be keepers.

The other choice (other than coronado) would be solarspectrum or daystar. I've seen the most astonishing results from the solarspectrum range. But it's not as easy to use + you need to power the Etalon so wouldn't be as portable as, say, a WO 66mm refractor and SM60 or Solarscope60 filter.

Time to pick my lotto numbers for tomorrow so I can get one

There is another way of course Trev involving a pst, an ERF and a scope. I plan to try this agin now that I have the TEC140. Would be great to have a 140mm H-alpha scope!