Coronado Solar Max 40 arrived

[telecasterguru (Frank)]

Hi all,

My new Coronado Solar Max 40 arrived on Friday and on first opening the box was impressed with the build quality of the scope. It looks very rugged in its gold and black.

I took it out or its first run this morning and I am most impressed.

The scope was set up on my Manfrotto camera mount without a problem. It is a quite stable platform.

Finding the sun through the finder was easy.

Viewing through the 25mm BF 10 eye piece, prominences were clear as were active regions.

Focusing was a breeze and the overall view was fantastic.

My neighbours that came to check out what I was doing, although apprehensive at first, were mightily impressed that they could see the sun. One even siad it was the first time she had looked at the sun since a dare competition to see who could stare at the sun the longest when she was four.

Overall I am very happy with the Solar Max 40 and can't wait to start imaging with it. I will be using my LPI.

One question though. Can I use ordinary eye pieces on the scope?

Thanks

Frank

[wavelandscott (Scott)]

I hope you enjoy you new toy. I don't know about the eyepieces.

[MikeyB (Michael)]

Assuming your question relates to safety: any eyepiece is safe to use, Frank. The scope itself gives you 100% protection against UV and IR (heat) through various blocking filters inside.

In general, you'll likely find that simpler design eyepieces such as plossls and orthoscopics will give a little bit more contrast when viewing the sun, than complex, highly-corrected, wide fields such as Naglers. Zooms can work very well too though, because of the flexibility they afford - the sun's appearance changes constantly and details of features can even change over the course of an observation session.

Congrats on the new scope, too. Your timing is perfect, as the sun is becoming increasingly active after a prolonged quiet spell that finally ended early last year. Lately we are getting a great variety of solar events to observe and that will only get better as it progresses towards the peak for the present sunspot cycle in a few years time. There's also an eclipse due later this year that's visible on the East coast, just to put the icing on the cake!

[casstony]

Any eyepiece that's not prone to reflections or glare works well for solar viewing. I like the Lunt zoom (US$149) for convenience.

[icytailmark (Mark)]

congrats on the new scope. I was planning on buying a solarmax next year so i can see the venus transit and of course look at the sun.

[Shano592 (Shane)]

These SolarMax scopes are awesome!

The level of detail is just brilliant, and I love putting the Ethos 10 on, to have a really close look at the prominences as they happen.

Now I just have to work out how to get some images through the chop-shopped CCD camera...

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

My favourite is the 10.4 TV plossl.

[telecasterguru (Frank)]

Thanks for the feedback and the kind words everyone.

Went out for a look this afternoon and there was exactly one cloud in the sky and guess where it was?

Frank