First Light: Coronado PST, 2004/8/23

Quite to my surprise on Friday evening I received the Coronado
Personal Solar Telescope that I had ordered from B & H last Monday.
Unfortunately, Saturday morning was cloudy and rainy and there wasn't
enough room in my friend Tony Donnangelo's vehicle for me to take my
newest optical toy along on our impromptu trip to Cherry Springs State
Park late that afternoon.

However, one of the first things I did upon returning on Monday
afternoon from two nights of dark sky observing at CSSP was to set up
my PST and have a look at the daystar. The PST is a 40mm f/10
dedicated H-alpha scope utilizing a 22mm diameter etalon H-alpha
filter with a bandpass of less than 1.0 Angstrom. At just under $500
it is one of least expensive ways of getting involved with observing
Sun's chromosphere and its ever-changing array of prominences,
filaments, plage, spicules, and other phenomena.

By 4:30 p.m. EDT (20:30 UT) I was viewing the Sun at the wavelength of
656.3 nanometers. A number of solar prominences of varying shapes and
sizes were present as well as some dark filaments and sunspots (AR
10652, AR 10663, and AR 10664). At the limb prominences were displayed
very well and the detail on the sun's disk was more than satisfactory.
During my examination of the chromosphere I used a Vixen zoom eyepiece
(at focal lengths of 24, 16, 12, and 8mm), a 12.5mm Edscorp
orthoscopic, a 12mm Coronado Cemax eyepiece which is optimized for
H-alpha work, a 9mm PMO ortho, an 8mm Tele Vue Radian, and a 7mm Tele
Vue Nagler Type 6 - all of which provided pleasing views, in
particular the 7mm Nagler T6 and the 12mm Cemax mated with a 2x
Celestron Ultima Barlow lens.

If you're at all interested in the fascinating field of H-alpha
observing my advice is to place your order for a PST without delay.

There's a review of the PST at
http://www.cloudynights.com/solar/pst.htm

Dave Mitsky