David Smith

Exactly, so my plan is either stop-down the Evostar 120 to 60mm giving me f/16ish (but still be imaging at 1000mm focal length) or use the Barlow or a 'combo' (pun intended) of the two to get higher f ratio if needed.

Yes, having read what I have I do expect to need one of those. First up though make sure it works and do some visual. Walking before running and all that. Will give my wallet time to come out of hiding too 😁

Yeah, sorry about that

Ok, decision made. I've been pondering my return to H alpha solar since selling my PST almost a year ago. I have read lots, asked lots of questions and if there is one thing I have learnt it is there is no ideal solution! The Lunt 60 DS would be close to ideal (for me) but £5k is out of my price range, SS at ~£2700 is achievable but leaves me with SS only. I could go external etalon on my Evostar but the Lunts are as expensive as the scopes (if not more so) and the Coronado are thought to be highly variable in quality plus Coronado / Meade customer service is not held in high regard by many! I could go Solarmax scope but the same applies as for their filters above. The Lunt 50 is an option, with good reviews and on offer at the moment so could get DS all in for under £2500 but it's not really an imaging scope and I fear the B600 would limit my options. That leaves the Quarks which are as variable in quality as the Coronado's (if not worse) and Daystar customer service seems hit and miss at best. Overall then each has it's pros and cons and all the possible solutions have their pitfalls so my conclusion on the most important factor in this purchase was that I need a good dealer who I knew I could rely on if I think I have made a mistake or something goes awry. That narrowed the choices to Lunt 50 or Quark really (Lunt 60 was out due to cost / SS limitation) and my thoughts went back and forth for a bit but eventually the flexibility of the Quark (can be used in different scopes, etc) broke the deadlock. So order placed with @FLO today for 1 x Quark Combo 1x ES telenegative 2x barlow lens 1 x Baader 2" 35nm Ha filter 1 x Baader 28mm fine tuning ring and a seperate order with the rainforest-themed multinational conglomerate for 1 of these https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B085RGZLBP/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Anything I have missed? I hope not as my wallet is now in hiding. Lets the mayhem commence....in 10 days time

Great disk Steve

Clear-ish skies today. A bit of high cloud so took the AR102 out initially and grabbed white light and Ca-K full disks. Conditions seemed to improve a little and the seeing was ok so I grabbed the Evostar for some more fun. Managed to get a full 6 pane FD and some proms so worth the effort. Nothing doing in white light but I had the AR102 on the mount and can do an FD so .... Then on to the Ca-K full disk. The usual 6 pane pano processed with more tone-curve shenanigans for a partially inverted view which just about shows some proms if you look hard. I quite liked the mono version so here are both the mono and false colour versions. After tinkering with Firecapture the other day I can shoot in 16 bit now so this is 6 x 500 frames @ 16bit which equates to about 30GB of data! That took AS!3 a while to process. Not entirely sure 16bit is giving me anything extra so will try and do a 16 vs 8 bit comparison at some point. Lastly some prom, shot binned as is commonly the case at the moment as this seems to work well. Clouded up soon after this session so glad I got on with it!

Nice. I saw the same prom in Ca-K yesterday.

Wow, that prom looks a bit of a monster.

Don't forget solar image processing too ☀️ Some DIY items - improving a wobbly scope mount, balancing an eq mount, setting up goto. The ever-popular "what filter should I use for...." question.

Beautiful clear skies early this morning. Seeing wasn't bad first thing but dropped off quickly after 8 am, seems I need to get my imaging done by 8 in order to get the best of it. Not sure why but my 6 pane full disk wouldn't stitch today, the last 2 panes were very soft looking at them. Never mind, I did manage to get some images of the big prom that's on show, so not a complete loss. Also spent some time playing with Firecaptures RAM buffer options which are now working nicely, allowing me to capture in 16 bit if I so desire without the frame rate dropping intermittently to 1 (whilst the SSD played catch-up) as it did previously!

Clouds cleared late today so had to work quick before the Sun hit the roof tops. Broke out the Bresser AR102xs as I did not believe I had time for a full 6 pane FD from the Evostar. Turned out I had more time than I thought and I managed to get a white light FD as well! Seeing was better than expected too. Pushed the Bresser again trying to bring out proms using tone curve but it clearly isn't really up to the task. I'm guessing the "flaring" is a collimation issue?

Great set Steve. Do you use the ED80 at full aperture for Ca-K?

Nicely done. Cloudy early here (with a little rain) and by the time that had cleared the seeing was appalling.

Nice one Dave.

Great set Steve

Thanks Stu. Yeah, being able to see Ca-K visually would be awesome. I could move to a Quark which apparently is better visually than the Lunt (although a slightly different wavelength) but I'm not keen to drop a grand or more on something which at best will see occasional use.

Thanks! You live in Scotland, you should be used to perma-cloud All shot with the ZWO ASI178MM

Lovely clear blue skies this morning and some awesome steady seeing visually when I first got out. White light disk was absolutely rock-steady allowing views right down to the 7.2mm stop on my zoom eyepiece. Something inexplicably beautiful about a clean, steady white light disk. Just a little faculae and the occasional darker area of granulation but I spent quite a bit of time just soaking up the views. When I did get around to imaging the seeing seemed to drop off a little bit but there were still good periods allowing me to grab some half-decent images. My only white light capture was this granulation shot. I did try to shoot the faculae but it did not come out well at all. Worth checking out the full size versions of these. Wider (uncropped) mono version Then moved on to Ca-K. Disk showing some nice plage areas, one aligned with the faculae seen in white light. Some good proms on show as well. 6 Pane Full disk shot @1000mm focal length. Still experimenting with this tone curve manipulation and presentation. Close ups of the proms, shot binned 2x2 to increase contrast and keep exposure times short. Not the best as seeing was running away like it was being chased by a T-Rex that hadn't eaten for a week Close ups of plage areas shot @2500mm using the Revelation 2.5x barlow. Seeing had really deteriorated by now

Nice. Seeing was best early here too. Visual white light disk was super steady first thing but after about 8am the seeing became more unpredictable. Just as I started my first imaging run!

Nice. Was a bit hit and miss weatherwise here yesterday so I bravely decided not to bother 😁

Remember you have a 30 day no-quibble return option with FLO. So you can test and return if not happy.

Possibly, they are the first thing to vanish if there is any cloud in the sky when I'm imaging. Good luck!

Nice. I'm very tempted by one myself at the minute. Have fun.

Ask away! I just push the exposure settings up and use 2x2 binning on the 178. As an example my surface exposures yesterday were 2ms with gain at 60 but my proms were 2.6ms with gain at 160. Without binning my exposure would have been 7-8ms and gain at about the same level, so it does make a big difference as the longer exposure has a knock on affect on frame rate too. Last couple of days I learnt how to manipulate the tone curve in ImPPG so am finding proms in my surface captures. All new to me.

Nice. Busy today so was not able to take advantage of the clear skies early this morning