Solar Observing in Ha with an 80ED?

[Davey-T]

Having been through this situation I have ended up with Lunt LS60DS  and Quark Chromo' mainly because I bought the LS60 first so after that  the Quark seemed "cheap" 

Having bought the LS60 I then had to buy a Skyris 274 to image a full disc this cost the same price as a Quark, worth bearing in mind if you're thinking of buying a LS60 just to image a full disc, lots cheaper to buy a quark and do mosaics with more detail as you may end up doing mosaics with the LS 60 anyway.

Hope this doesn't make you more confused 

Dave

[Pig]

I made my choices based purely on what I wanted out of the hobby which is want every one must do. I was in a slightly different position to you as I had the benefit of already owning a dedicated Solar scope and thus I was able to draw my conclusions from this experience.

I do not know how much you will have spend to beat the views through an 80mm short triplet versus a Lunt,  but I suspect will be considerably more. I have spent in the region of £2k and have a very pleasing solar set up that beats a single stack Lunt 60 hands down and into the deal I also have 2 excellent refractors to use. I will also think about solar imaging a soon as my circumstances change.

[ecuador]

Well, you could always do mosaics   Just 4 shots should cover the disk!

Otherwise, has anyone tried a cheap short tube achromatic with the quark? For example a Celestron Travel Scope 70 is 400mm focal length, can be bought for next to nothing and there will no CA etc issues with a Quark, so it might make sense to try it out for a full disc?

[Davey-T]

In the winter when the Sun was too low to image from my obs'y I used the Quark in an ST80 with PG BFly 692 but didn't get a full disc.

Dave

[ecuador]

In the winter when the Sun was too low to image from my obs'y I used the Quark in an ST80 with PG BFly 692 but didn't get a full disc.

Dave

Daystar says you need 450mm or less to even see a full disk visually. You can't expect a small 1/3" CCD sensor to get a full image with 400mm focal length. An APS-C sensor your ST80 on the other hand might have a chance...

[Davey-T]

Daystar says you need 450mm or less to even see a full disk visually. You can't expect a small 1/3" CCD sensor to get a full image with 400mm focal length. An APS-C sensor your ST80 on the other hand might have a chance...

Didn't expect it to, only posted for OPs information on what to expect from various setups if they're hoping for full disc images.

Dave

[Snaxmuppet]

I have come to a decision... it is the Quark with my Evostar 80ED for now. It will get me nicely into solar imaging and I don't want to delay any longer. If I am still yearning for full disc then I will buy a new short-focal scope, such as the Altair Lightwave 72 (432mm at F6). That would also be a great grab and go or travel scope and I could even use it as a super guide scope. It would also give me a quality solar platform as I would then have the 72 for full disc and the 80ED (or even bigger if I upgrade) for close in views. I could set them both up on the mount together and switch the Quark between them or do visual on one and imaging on the other.

So, now all I need is to find someone with a Quark in stock

I can't thank you all enough for your various inputs, comments and advice.

[Stu]

Good decision

Have fun with it

[Pig]

Sounds fantastic  good hunting with the Quark

[ecuador]

I have come to a decision... it is the Quark with my Evostar 80ED for now. It will get me nicely into solar imaging and I don't want to delay any longer. If I am still yearning for full disc then I will buy a new short-focal scope, such as the Altair Lightwave 72 (432mm at F6). That would also be a great grab and go or travel scope and I could even use it as a super guide scope. It would also give me a quality solar platform as I would then have the 72 for full disc and the 80ED (or even bigger if I upgrade) for close in views. I could set them both up on the mount together and switch the Quark between them or do visual on one and imaging on the other.

So, now all I need is to find someone with a Quark in stock

I can't thank you all enough for your various inputs, comments and advice.

Note that the 450mm figure they give for a full disk seems to be for visual. If you want a full disk in photography, when you get the Quark, see exactly how much it fits on your sensor and calculate what focal length you will need before buying a second refractor.

[Luke]

Enjoy the Quarkage

[ecuador]

Actually, going by the photo in this post, it seems that you would fill the Fuji sensor vertically with a 390mm focal length, which means that for example a slightly smaller Canon APS-C sensor would fill with just 370mm... Hm, I guess that's one case where a full frame sensor would be very useful?

[Snaxmuppet]

Thanks... my initial imaging will be with a Canon dSLR APS-C on my 80ED so I might get a feel for how much of the disc I can fit in with a smaller scope from that. I am pretty open-minded about this though. I have commited to the Quark so I shall do now whatever I need to do to make it work from me. I may need a shorter scope for full disc in which case I shall get something suitable at a later date. Your heads-up warnings are very helpful. Thanks.

BTW... I realise a dSLR is not ideal for solar Ha. It has a Bayer mask. So I will want to get a mono CCD later and probanly a large chip such as the Skyris 274.

[ecuador]

FYI, if the calculation based on that Borg pic turns out accurate and you need around 370mm fl for the canon, be aware that there is the Orion 80mm GoScope for £109 on Amazon, with a 350mm focal length

[Al.Grant]

For me the decision to go down the Quark route was a fairly easy one.  I already had the Equinox 80, so budget wise it was just the Quark & UV/IF cut filter as opposed to the full Lunt 60.

I could have gone for the Lunt 50 for around the same outlay, but the extra aperture lured me in.  Also the Quark is free to move to another scope or to be used as a DS option on a Lunt if needs be in the future.

I've had my Quark now for about 10 days, due to clouds and work I've only managed 3 fairly short solar sessions and none of those had particularly great seeing conditions.

It's fair to say first outing with the Quark & Equinox 80 Pro (and an IR/UV cut filter) did not live up to my expectations!  

I'm putting that down the the lame excuse of a portable battery that I was using at the time. (That has now been returned!)

Initially the Quark LED went green but almost straight away it went back to yellow and stayed there, even though all the battery pack LED's were showing fully charged and I was using a 2A output.  

Whilst I could see some proms and surface features, the clarity, contrast and overall view in general was just lacking in all respects.  

I also had some dark blotches/shadows around the edge of the view that rotated with the Quark but not the ep  (these in particular worried me!)

Enter a far more reliable power source, a steady green LED on the Quark ...... and  WOW! What a difference!  (Even with less than ideal seeing conditions).

For powering the Quark I'm currently using one of these  RAV  12v in car USB charging adapters (3 x 5v 2.4A outputs).  It turns the Quark LED green in under 10 mins and it stays there.

Obviously it's not a stand alone power source, but as I'm using the Quark/Equinox on my HEQ5 Pro and powering that from a 110Ah leisure battery I may as well draw the power from that

I've only tried with the Quark on the centre tuning position but the quality of the image is fantastic, lots of surface detail and prom activity showing up and happily the blotches/shadows are no longer visible.

I have 2x 40mm ep's that I've tried but I don't get a full disc with either one and whilst a full disc would be good I'm too busy taking in the view to worry about it.

I'd like to do a side-by-side comparison with a dedicated Ha scope at some point, but at the moment ...... Quark & Happy!

Al

[Zakalwe]

Well, you could always do mosaics   Just 4 shots should cover the disk!

Otherwise, has anyone tried a cheap short tube achromatic with the quark? For example a Celestron Travel Scope 70 is 400mm focal length, can be bought for next to nothing and there will no CA etc issues with a Quark, so it might make sense to try it out for a full disc?

No CA to worry about, but there are other types of anomalies that a cheap scope will have. Spherical abberation, field flatness and a poor focuser comes to mind. The Quark, extension tube/diagonal and camera all add up to a fairly heavy load. Plus it's a long imaging train. I wouldn't fancy that hanging off a cheapo Crayford or rack and pinion focuser at all. With a Quark you are also imaging at f30 (ish) which needs an accurate focuser. I use a Robofocus on a decent Crayford and the difference between being in focus and  way off is surprisingly small.