Sun March 18

[darditti]

I was busy with the Lunt LS60T on the 18th, though the sky was this semi-clear milky mush it has been constantly for about a week now. I reckon the planes have lot to do with it. Here are the results. Only the bottom prominence was bright enough to be obvious visually.

David

[JAO]

David

Excellent images, in spite of the conditions. Completely agree with you about the contribution planes are making to the overall mush!

Regards

Adrian

[Dangerous-Dave]

Nice shots David.

[NickH]

David

The images still show marked smearing, and pronounced focus issues, though I guess you don't need me to tell you that, and I doubt very much, given the exceptional deep sky work you do, as well as planetary that you have any issues with focus of a telescope.

Compare to images I took a few days ago with a modified PST (using a very small etalon), under poor seeing, and you will get the idea of what a 0.75A 60mm scope should be able to do with the skynyx (one of the best cameras in the world)

[darditti]

Yes. I and the dealer (Richard Best) think it is probably a collimation issue. It could have gone wrong in transport. It has had to go back to Lunt.

A bit sad, but both the dealer and the company have been very helpful. Hopefully it will be fixed.

David

[NickH]

David, take a look at the Lunt images gallery, find me more than 3 images (in fact...find me one!) that are at F20 or higher with any semblance of tack sharp focus. Pete seems to havwe got the closest to a high res focus image..

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/luntsolar/photos/album/1503614099/pic/496547329/view?picmode=&mode=tn&order=mtime&start=1&count=20&dir=desc

Just one example..

[darditti]

Latest word is that it is on the way back and Lunt have replaced the blocking filter.

It seems kind of unlikely to me that the focus issues I was experiencing could be to do with the blocking filter. A component so close to the image plane will not normally affect focus in a critical manner. But I have to retain an open mind at this stage.

David

[Merlin66]

Sorry to hear that, David.

It could be that the blocking filter was mis-matched to the etalon, and caused loss of bandwidth and resolution???

Hope it works out well for you.

[NickH]

fingers crossed too

As soon as you get it back, try imaging at say F25 or higher, and see how it goes...

SV50 I push to F40 regularly (tack sharp focus too), and that is a 50mm aperture. Pete L has also had his PST at F30-40 with tack sharp focus and clear surface details at 40mm aperture (I could not with mine as the prism was misaligned in the stock model, hence I modded it)

[NickH]

David

Also have a look on Cloudy Nights, an interesting comparison of the B1200 and B600 blocking filters, one showing markedly better (still not perfect) focus than the other, on the same scope/setup/camera within minutes of each other.