PST80 Final composite set 16th March

[NickH]

5 pane composite image at F25 using the PST80 (Vixen A80M/PST etalon at 0.7A, BF10)

Imaged with a Lumenera Skynyx 2-1M camera

HEQ5 Mount tracking solar rate

Captured with Lucam recorder

Processed in Registax 4 and CS2

Variable seeing

(mono shot shows that a few minutes later with slightly different gain settings, the surface seeing was far better)

Thanks for looking

[Dave Smith]

Very impressive.

Dave

[brianb]

Nice one Nick ... is the mono a "one shot"?

I've noticed very rapid changes in seeing over the last few days, signs of the jet stream re-anchoring itself overhead instead of running through Spain giving them horrid weather

[NickH]

Brian

The mono is a one shot, with the Skynyx 2-1m at F25 on the modded PST. Just running some checks in AVIstack 1.81 (last time I tried it it was sluggish and lacked wavelets, so will give it a blast again)

Here's the Lucam recorder live screen grab from that one shot as it was occurring..

I said seeing was good...you be the judge :-) but agree that seeing is really quite variable at the moment. Steady at F8, but ramping it up the effects were really quite noticeable

[RobH]

Superb work Nick.

The mono shot is especially impressive for the detail you've captured.

Cheers

Rob

[NickH]

Thanks guys...looks like these made Spaceweather.com too

[russ]

Two spectacular images Nick, not surprised they made Spaceweather.com.

[Tim]

Great detail in that prom Nick, hope my PST mod will perform as well as this

[NickH]

Thanks

I just wish people would stop wasting money on other products (still not seen ANY images which impress me from that make),

and just see what this can do...if you want full disc, then a SF50 will work marvels, but for high res work, there's only three choices I would go with, and that's a Daystar/SS or Solarscope or modded PST...

[jarbi]

Wonderful and crisp images Nick, thanks for sharing ! How do you get this orange colour ? When I try to make color films I get deep red only, maybe tweaking in Photoshop could help ?

cheers,

Janos

[NickH]

Photoshop levels and curves,...adjust the red up by 10-20%, green down by the same, blue down by 80%

Works wonders

Try yours at F40...and let me know if you get crisp sharp imaging?

[RogerMc]

Smashing images Nick. I just can't seem to get my pst80 that sharp.

Roge

[NickH]

It's down to the optics...not the etalon ...if your BF10 is good, you've removed the prism, and your front optics good too (hence Vixen A80) then...rock n roll

Otherwise, it's like most of the "other" scopes I have tried...fuzzy at high mag...

[russ]

Stunning image Nick.

[NickH]

To be completely honest and fair about all of this... I have now seen one Solarscope 50, with optics that IMHO were not perfect....the key difference being that when I reported this to Solarscope, they immediately and without any hesitation said "get it back to us and we'll resolve it"... with a very quick turnaround too...no questions asked at all..

I had 4 different PST's during the run to get this setup...three were okay, but showed excessive off band sweet spots and/or were closer to 1A than I liked...which is within spec, but knowing that the 0.7A ones existed, not sometrhing I would live with

[NickH]

And...that's the first solarscope in 5 years I have seen that I have thought is not perfect...and that was at F40...not perfect,....at F8 it was visually fine...

Compare to the 4 LS's I have tried...all of which have massive sweet spots on full disc, and/or don't hold magnification well at all.. Stephen Green's has been the best I have seen so far...and that had a half disc sweet spot, but the image quality stood up okay to a 2.5X powermate when imaging

[brianb]

Nick, my SV60 had an optical problem too, it went back to base & Ken fixed it ... replaced the objective which had mild astigmatism. Reasonably fast turnround despite Ken being away for the eclipse (last year) & very effective, the scope is now performing excellently.

The issue with Lunts seems to be QA in the blocking filter. One of the locals has a Lunt 50mm (single stack) filter set, another has a Solarscope SV50, I've seen these at the same location (therefore same seeing) & the performance was very much similar in terms of crispness of image, the Solarscope had a touch more contrast though. OTOH I've seen lots of moans about Lunts being delivered in a state where the contrast is very poor ... the practical part of me suggests that they're not checking them & performing the necessary adjustments before shipping them, the cynical part of me suggests that they're trying to pressure people into upgrading to double stack in an effort to get more contrast. My Lunt B1200 CaK diagonal had very poor contrast too. I must say that their after sales service was very good, effective fix & fast turnround, not in the least like Meade/Coronado! The 60mm scope that came with it is fine, when used with a standard diagonal, and delivers all the resolution I'd expect when imaging with the CaK diagonal ... I can't comment on the visual performance as I'm completely blind to extreme violet.

Many people with Lunt Ha scopes also complain of "sweet spot" but then the PST has that in spades & my Solarscope also shows signs when making full disc shots at low gamma settings (it's more of a "sweet bar" though, and is in any case completely invisible when viewing by eye.)

I think the real issue with Lunt is that they grew too fast and are only now getting to a stable production line with goods actually being delivered - there was a big backlog & there must have been lots of pressure to ship something before people started cancelling advance orders.

[NickH]

Very good points Brian.. The Luint Cak's have been uniformly excellent that I have seen. Changing the reflectivity on the H-A run pointed to an issue with their H-A products for sure, and by sweet spot, I mean "large black band" something I have seen only on the Lunt's, whereas on the PST, it's more subtle, but there for sure. Visually at low mag, it would be hard to tell the two apart, for me, it's that they completely break down at high er mags...every one I have seen, which is backed up by the lack of any decent really high resolution/high matg images from even the LS100's

The real issue ...though....I found with Lunt, thankfully now seems to be no more a part of their setup...and I hope that they do now continue to grow without him..

[AztecastroMcJ]

Very nice pics Nick

i esp like mono shot as it seems to have more detail in prom

think the saturation in other tends to hide some of detail

great shot again

reminds me of recent apod which was one of best i have seen 2date

i'm sure you noticed it aswell but if not heres link

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100323.html

makes me want to give Solar a try

just short on funds at min lol

James

[Starflyer]

The mono shot is one of the best I've seen Nick, amazing level of detail.

[NickH]

I love Alan's work...hand picked frames...but quire easy to get that effect *(invert and colour and possibly hpf)

Superb shots from his CORONADO SM90 though... :-)