A little bit of activity today, one large sunspot surrounded by a rather large plage. A large filament is visible as well as some prominences. Taken with my Solarmax40, 400D and 18mm Cemax EP.
Glad you got your PST OK, you'll get a lot of use out of it I'm sure even if we are in a solar minimum phase at the moment. Hopefully things will hot up so to speak and we can get maximum use out of these little beauties. I'm glad I kept the PST after getting it back from Meade/Coronado after nearly four months. It works perfectly well and in actual fact appears to give sharper and more contrasty views than my Solarmax40. The PST does have a "sweetspot" where proms are visible at certain parts in the field of view whereas the Solarmax shows the whole face of the Sun and proms visible all at once. My Solarmax has the BF10 filter which apparently is more suited for imaging and this is bourne out by comparing images taken through both scopes. The Solarmax is a clear winner as the PST images tend to be uneven with regards to exposure. I have attached an image of the Sun taken with the PST this morning taken around the same time as the Solarmax image. The eyepiece is the same 18mm Cemax and the shutter speed is the same which was about 1/20th sec. I am not happy with the image and it was rather more difficult to obtain any better.
With regard to the double stacking, it is easy enough to detach the narrow band filter and T-Max de-tuner off the Solarmax40 and fit it to the PST however a bit of fiddling is required with focus and tune both de-tuners together. There appears to be a reflection off the PST front lens or Solarmax40 filter which manifests itself as a red reflection in the field of view. Adjusting both de-tuners changes the position of the red reflection in the field but can be moved to one side of the image of the Sun.
The image with the double stacking is not as bright but not badly so. The surface contrast is better however there is a loss of clarity with the proms which is understandable. Overall I don't consider double stacking the PST has transformed my viewing pleasure, I think I'm happy to use both side by side and perhaps use the Solarmax40 for imaging and the PST for visual use. Perhaps if you bought a dedicated double stacked PST from Coronado perhaps the Solarmax40 filter would be properly tuned to the PST?
I am going to definitely try the Solarmax40 filter out on one of my 80ED's to see if it performs any better although some reports say that the 40mm achromat lens on the Solarmax is pretty good in any case and not much will be gained by fitting the filter to other scopes, gotta try though.
