Modding with a Lunt

[A McEwan]

Hi all,

Many a time and oft we read of the amazing home-modded telescopes fitted with parts from PST donor scopes, resulting in fabulous big aperture H-alpha observing machines. Better in every way than the original PST scope and at only moderate cost when compared with the commercially available H-alpha scopes of similar aperture and spec.

But I've not yet heard of anyone doing anything similar with a Lunt donor scope. The Lunts must surely be constructed around a broadly similar optical design: ERF at front, objective lens, etalon and tuner mechanism, focuser, blocking filter.

Anyone heard about any experiments with Lunt compnents in a home-build project?

Ant

[Peter Drew]

I've modded a number of PST's and have been seriously considering trying a Lunt mod. As far as I know, the coating on the objective, as with the Coronado, acts as the ERF. The Lunt has a single element objective, I'm not sure if there is any other component to help its correction. The attraction for this mod is that the system appears not to be restricted to F10 or longer, the blocking filters are less expensive than the Coronado versions and the Lunts I have used seem to have fewer internal reflection issues. I have seen impressive images from Coronado's using Lunt blocking filters so there must be some degree of compatibility.

[Merlin66]

I don't know of any successful Lunt mods (yet) - if you send me one - I'd love to give it a go.......

[markt]

Only aware of people putting coronado etalons onto lunt scopes to double stack them...