pst new toy

[Stardust]

Took the plunge and had my PST delivered today, a good deal and service from FLO, thanks Steve.

The weather here in Kent is pretty awful , so don't know when I'll get first light.

At least I've doubled my chances of actually using a scope

DAve

[Greg]

Ca K or Ha??

[Helen]

Glad its arrived safely Dave. If you get some good weather could you send me some too - managed 10 minutes or so with my PST and that arrived before Christmas!!

Helen

[daz]

Dave

You've doubled your chance of seeing cloud, more like!!

Fingers crossed you get first light soon!!

[Stardust]

Oops, it's an Ha one

You are very probably right about the cloud Daz.

My wife bought me a book "The cloud spotters guide", oh she's funny.

10 mins Helen, still bet it was worth waiting for those 10 mins.

DAve

[Helen]

Even more frustrating - as I know what I'm missing!!!!

Helen

[Stardust]

Managed 30 mins before the sun set, but a rotten view through trees. So what were my first impressions?

It's well made with a reassuring weight to it with nice smooth controls. Focusser is a bit small and the eyepiece thumb screw looks like it will snap if sneezed on. The 20mm Kelner that comes with it looks like it came out of a cracker. Still put a decent ep in and away you go.

It all started off, well red really, then I saw the 2 sunspots, a lovely prominence popped into view and quite a lot of surface detail, more than I expected as it happens. Then the sun set. My expectations were exceeded and I'm looking forward to a decent session, Sunday looks like the next window in the weather. Has anyone tried to mate a DSLR to one of these?

Helen I see you have a digimax zoom eyepiece, any good?

Dave

[Astroman]

The more you look ,the more you'll see. Using a hood over your head to "dark adapt" to just the light coming from the scope will help immensely, trust me.

Congrats on your new-found fun!

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Has anyone tried to mate a DSLR to one of these?Dave

Yes, it's not very good as all the light is red and only 25% of the sensor pixels are red so you loose loads of detail. Also the preview fools you as the image needs to come out very dim to avoid oversaturating the red channel. When you see what looks good on the preview, your red is ALL overexposed.

Fun trying though, and you'll almost certainly need a Barlow to get it to focus (and focus is a whole other pain).

Captain Chaos

[Greg]

Yes, it's not very good as all the light is red and only 25% of the sensor pixels are red so you loose loads of detail. Also the preview fools you as the image needs to come out very dim to avoid oversaturating the red channel. When you see what looks good on the preview, your red is ALL overexposed.

What about the Ca K one CC??

Tis the one i'm saving for.

[Astroman]

Not having a DSLR yet, I can't be sure, but I'd imagine the difficulties would be similar, just on the opposite end of the spectrum. Replace CC's "red" with "violet" and you're there.

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

What AM said, but replace CaK in place of DSLR, basically. The problem is with the DSLR having internal RGB filters over the sensor and can't easily be got round. If you try narrowband imaging with a DSLR you only use that part of the sensor that gets lit up with the light through the filter, and with a PST it's either red light or purple light. Either of those will only illuminate a quarter of the sensor and so you get problems.

Captain Chaos

[PeterW]

Unless you're lucky you will need to use an imager/webcam etc to get anything out of the CaK PST.

The PST is great little scope, loads to see, even with the stock eyepiece. You need to use a sun glare shield... bit of cardboard works fine and then shield your eye from stray light, the longer you look the more you'll see.

Very reasonable entry into a very interesting view of the sun... a real winner.

PEterW