My latest Solar project update....:-), just saved myself a whole whole heap of..

[barkis]

I hope Chinese Customs let it all through. All that stuff may have them a bit worried.

You'd better brush up on your Mandarin Nick.

Ron.

[Psychobilly]

Bit late to Patent as its been posted on the forum and is therefore in the "public domain"...

And these days patents are a waste of time for the "little man" and the chinese get up to all sorts of tricks to invalidate them

Billy...

[NickH]

not really in my nature to patent stuff...more in to helping others do things..

Anyway for the record, the mod is comprised as follows

threaded 2 inch PST adapter (German made), the threading is important as to the front of this fits the IR 2 inch filter to kill unwanted heat

Inside this fits quite snugly the PST CaK module, which requires some force to remove, but comes out. This sits within the blue ring from the PST. That blue rings screws to an Astro engineering 2 inch SCT adapter, which then clips on to a 2 inch to 1.25 inch adapter. Then a 1.25 inch diagonal, with the ep holder portion removed, and the PST CaK EP assemblty screwed in to that.

Et voila... something not dissimilar to another certain companies CaK module.. but for a grand total of £78 (+ PST CaK)

Still testing the heat tolerances, but it was running at 80mm no problems at all (the other one is rated to 100mm)..

With the IR filter in place, it should easily take 100-110mm

[NickH]

Chinese customs have to content with

1 x WO80 scope in bag, with tripod adapter fitted

2 x modified modules (see pics above)

1 x small tripod

1 x EOS300D with 2 inch adapter for White light (WO80 is the lens system!)

1 x Lumenera Skynyx 2-0m

1 x ASUS Atom laptop /PSU and USB cable

That's it..

should be relatively easy...going to speak to the Chinese embassy beforehand to make sure as well

[Psychobilly]

Thanks for the additional info Nick

I agree - I always share any astro related things for the benefit of fellow insomniacs...

Billy...

[Helen]

Thanks for the info Nick :salute: I'm tempted to do a mod using the standard PST to up the detail and make photography easier... do you think it would work with a Megrez 90??

Oh, and we want to go to China too!

Helen

[NickH]

The success and failure of the H-A mod depends on the focal ratio and the back focus of the scope. Higher focal ratio the better for H-A as the beams have to hit the etalon as close to parallel as possible. Whilst the PST etaon has a fore and aft lens system to assist with this, the best results I have seen/achieved have been with F10 (approx) setups. Back focus is due to the space required between the etalon (and it's aft lens) and the secondary blocking filter..

For CaK...it doesn't matter one jot..

[NickH]

Very quick test shot in truly dire conditions today.. it works...at F30 and F12.. (stack of only 5 frames at F30 gives you some idea of just how bad conditions were on Oct 3rd)