Review: Coronado Personal Solar Telescope (PST)

[iceman (Mike)]

Hi all

Alan Sheehan (sheeny) has kindly written a review on the Coronado PST. Well worth a read if you've been thinking about buying one of these great entry level solar scopes. You can read the review on the IceInSpace Reviews page, or directly by clicking on the link below:

Coronado Personal Solar Telescope (PST)

Thanks to Al for writing the review!

If you'd like to submit an article or review for the site, please contact me!

[iceman (Mike)]

Review uploaded.

[OneOfOne (Trevor)]

Nice review and I agree whole heartedly with the comments made. The only point I would add is be careful with the focus movement, there is no stop! At Ballarat last year we were trying to set up Bird's camera to get some footage of the sun and had to try to get the focus right. Eventually we appeared to have screwed the focus knob right out. We were able to get it back in again, but it is a point to be aware of.

[Doug]

G'day Alan, you mentioned on another thread that you had difficulty focusing.
Was this due to the travel of the drawtube, or the stability/controllability of the focuser. I'm seriously thinking of getting a PST, however it would be used mostly for imaging.
cheers,
Doug

[sheeny (Al)]

Doug,

It's not a problem with focusser travel. I have used my 10mm plossl in the PST and it is parfocal with my ToUcam.

I have only tried the ToUcam once with the PST, and it really wasn't ideal conditions. I started off focussing with the 10mm plossl, put in the ToUcam and then thought I'd fine tune the focus with the focus aid in K3. Well, due to a lack of detail on the sun, partly due to no sunspots and probably poor adjustment of the Ha filter on my part, and also possibly due to seeing, I couldn't really find any detail on the screen. I got the limb as close to focus as I could but it left a lot to be desired.

Because I couldn't get consistent detail, I couldn't really stack it very well either. Neither registax nor K3 could reliably pick the same feature .

Having the PST on an eq mount would help because you wouldn't need to chase the sun so much. I've just been using mine on a fixed tripod so far.

There are two versions of the PST FYI. The H alpha which gives a nice bright image suitable for observing, and the CaK which gives a darker image so is recommended for imaging.

Obviously there are guys out there who can focus these things well - just look at Guillaume's image today! I just need to learn the knack I think!

Al.

[Doug]

Thanks Alan, I knew there was a CaK, but didn't know it was preferred for imaging. As you would know I am waiting for a reply from Guillaume, so it would be good to hear something of his technique.
Now how am I going to get around my wife on this one

cheers,
Doug