Lunt solar

I disposed of my old Coronado Personal Solar Telescope recently because it had deteriorated (rusted, essentially) over 20 years and was no longer usable. Not that was very usable to begin with. It was nearly impossible to take images through. There are still Coronado PSTs and more advanced solar scopes being sold, but parent company Meade is bankrupt and I don't know how well Coronado products are supported any more.

The most direct alternative to Coronado in the US is a company in Tuscon, Lunt Solar Systems. I decided to replace the PST with a Lunt 50mm Dedicated Hydrogen-Alpha Solar Telescope, one of their lower-end scopes. I think it should be sufficient to get my sun fix, and if not I can always trade up. Delivery was supposed to occur in early December.

However, it showed up Thursday. There was no time to set it up Thursday and Friday was cloudy. The forecast for today wasn't good either, but it cleared enough for a couple of hours to look through it. It doesn't come with an eyepiece, and the only one I had at the recommended starting point of 26mm is a Meade. I set the scope up on my photo tripod, eventually found the sun, and tried to focus. It looked terrible, not even as good as the old PST on its best day 20 years ago. Hmm. I switched to a TeleVue 20mm eyepiece and found the sun again. Wow. I didn't even have to refocus. Note to self: Use your TeleVue eyepieces whenever possible.

At that point I undertook the tuning process, which involves unscrewing and rescrewing a barrel on the side of the scope. This somehow adjusts the pressure in the tube, I guess. Eventually I was able to glean a filament and a prominence. It was time to try photography.

First I tried the Canon M100 on a T-mount. I figured if any of my EOS cameras could come to focus, it would be this one since it is mirrorless and the sensor is not set back very far. Nope, I couldn't focus it. Then I tried my newly-acquired ZWO ASI174MM Monochrome Imaging Camera connected to the even newer ZWO ASIAir Camera Controller, a Raspberry Pi mini-computer packaged in a nice little case. It found the camera, but I could not get a preview image, which I attribute to my own ignorance. I switched over to ZWO software I installed on a spare laptop. It found the camera, but by that time the respite from clouds was over and I gave up for the day. The weather probably won't be great the next few days, but it might clear for a day on Tuesday. I have a few days to research how to get the ASIAir to show me a preview image of the sun.

I know the Lunt works as it gave me some sunspots, a filament and a prominence. Now I just have to get the imaging part to work. I have acquired a lot of telescope equipment in recent months and it is hard to learn it all at once. I acquired a Skywatcher telescope mount a while ago and figuring it out is one of my next big projects. In a perfect world, I mount the Lunt on the Skywatcher and have the ZWO controller driving the mount and taking solar images with the ZWO camera. At night, I swap in my TeleVue 85 telescope and do some deep sky imaging. To do that right, in time I need to add a filter wheel, a guiding scope and an autofocuser, all of which would be controlled by the ASIAir. But I haven't even hooked it to the Skywatcher mount yet, so one step at a time.

My other recent purchase was a ZWO Seestar S50 smart telescope, which is so easy to set up and use that it has done all of my observing in the past three months. But I know the images I can get with a more conventional setup will be better. I spent 25 years resisting going down this astrophotography road, but it appears I have finally started the journey.