steenkh

Thanks for all the comments. It is invaluable to get advice from people who know the instrument. My PST is new, and I forgot to tell you that I have had very little opportunity to use it. After I received it, it has been cloudy whenever I have been at my summer house where the instrument is located. Once, when I had to visit the summer house to retrieve a charger that I had forgotten, the Sun was out, and I had ten minutes to set up the telescope and look through it for the first time before I had to pack up and leave with the next bus. The second time, we stayed there, and the Sun was shining nicely, but the garden was a swamp because of recent rain, and I could only set the PST up on a porch. I had to wait some hours before the Sun appeared from behind a large birch tree, and this time I managed about a quarter of an hour before clouds made observation impossible. That is a complete description of all my sessions with my new telescope! I now realise that my second session which was much more deliberate, and where I had set up my AZ-GTi mount to track the Sun, was compromised by a wispy clouds before the Sun disappeared completely, and this might explain why I was disappointed. I have often used another telescope with white light, and sunspots were easily discernible even through thin clouds, and I expected the same to be true for H-alpha. I have also made the mistake of comparing my view with satellite pictures taken in other wavelengths. I’ll now only use the Gong pictures for reference, and I see that there really was very little to see when I had my opportunity. For instance, no protuberances. So far I have only used the 18mm Coronado CEMax eyepiece that came with the telescope, but I have plenty of others to choose from. The description of how to store the etalon with least stress, and how to turn it systematically during observation to find sweet spots for different features, is very useful. I hope for more sunshine next time we go to the summer house, and with real luck, even cloudless nights. But Danish weather is traditionally lousy during winter (and the nights are too short during summer, so the PST was really bought for having something to do in summer).

I have bought a Coronado PST, but I only see a dark red Sun with no details whatsoever. It is very easy to find the Sun, and the image looks clean and crisp. If I turn the focus knob far to either side, a certain blurriness is evident, as expected, but there is a large interval between the extremes where the image seems focused, judged from the sharpness of the edge. But there is nothing to see except a featureless disc. I have checked against current solar pictures, and I should be have been able to see at least one sunspot - which should appear bright in the H-alpha light. I have bought the extra etalon to make the PST double-stacked, but this changes very little (with the extra etalon, there is a strong ghost Sun, but it does not overlap the real image). I have turned on all wheels on the etalons, and I imagine that I see more when I turn them right to the stop, but the image also turns darker, and I might imagine details that are not there. Is this a common experience? I have a feeling that the image is too bright, and that I might see more details if I somehow let less light through, so next time the Sun reveals itself from behind the clouds that have hidden it ever since I got the telescope, I am going to use sunglasses, or use a polarizing filter.