I posted this earlier in the week.

At the Astrofest exhibition in London yesterday I
was able to very quickly compare 4 solar
telescopes. I am by no means a solar expert (and
have no connection with any of the manufacturers
mentioned), but have looked through a couple of HA
scopes before albeit briefly on each occasion.



Yesterday at about 10:30 am the somewhat hazy, low
sun over London was at an altitude of 19 deg and
the views were over the centre of the capital, so
I will assume that conditions were not that good.
I had about 1 minute looking through each scope -
so what follows is a definitely a first
impression.



At the top end was the Coronado Maxscope 90mm
dedicated solar scope. The solar disk views and
prominence detail through the attached binoviewer
were simply superb, as you could expect from a
scope that (according to the demonstrator) costs
£12,000+ (!) in the UK. A little bit more
affordable were the Solarview 50mm dedicated HA
scope (£3,000) and a Solarview 50mm filter
attached to a TV pronto (?). These acquitted
themselves very well against the big Coranado with
excellent views, not too far short of the scope
costing 4x as much; the pronto gave slightly
better views than the dedicated scope IMHO. This
is all very esoteric stuff for most of us mortals
and comprehensive reviews appear elsewhere but
since the adverts for the Coronado PST appeared
with a price of £500 I started to think seriously
about getting an HA scope.



So what's the PST like - in short (and estimating
hugely 8-)) the solar disk details are 40% as good
as the Solarview scopes I could compare it
against, and the prominences are 90% as good.
Granulation in the expensive scopes was clear and
well defined, in the PST the same granulation was
visible but at reduced contrast. Sun spots and
plages were similarly not as contrasty. The most
obvious deficiency in the PST's view was that the
filaments that were clear in the expensive scopes
were on the threshold of vision in the PST. On
the other hand solar prominences showed up very
well, with only a small difference between all 4
scopes.



Overall, not bad in my opinion though not the
scope for a solar specialist, and I think the
views are definitely worth the price in comparison
to the more expensive scopes. Now, just how much
credit is left on my Visa card?





Adam
--
Eschew obfuscation. Eliminate such idiom previous
to rejoining.

"Edward" wrote in message

..net...
This is an intriguing little scope, has anyone
tried it? Whats the inside
scoop from the solar observing world? Do I need
one?

Ed T.