Posts Made By: Paul Hyndman

Hi All,

As I await word to send my filter in for the stacking treatment (Ah say hallelujah, brother and sister!), I've been mulling over the principals involved and have come to suspect that my previous concepts may have been wrong (like that never happened to me before, huh?)

When Barlow Bob and I plonked my SM90 onto his 90/60 setup, we assumed the effect was cumulative, with each filter further tightening the bandpass. I now suspect the improvement was a result of the two front mounted 90's and perhaps was not further aided by the third filter.

Check out this plot of what I think might actually be happening. What cha' think... yes/no?



Paul

Hi All,

This helpful clarification of PST bandpass specs has recently been posted by Nick on the Coronado message board, and I copy it here for your perusal:

I have seen on a lot of posts on various sites concerning the actual bandpass of the PST telescope and I feel I may have caused this confusion. In our ads and other marketing material we state the bandpass as follows.

"<1.0A - <0.6A"

A lot of people have taken this to mean that a stock PST can vary in performance from unit to unit from <1.0 to <0.6

In our line of work that would be a vary large margin of error for us work with. Instead what we intended to convey was that a PST is available in <1.0A or <0.6A. The later being the result of double stacking with the SolarMax 40 / T-Max.

We do not make PST's with that large of a variance in performance. Off the shelf with no modifications the bandpass of all PST's is just under 1.0 Angstroms.

Cheers,

Paul

Well, sort of...

Although the rains have let up and the ark has settled (oink, oink!), the sky has not fully relented: cumulo bimbus and high cirrus clouds with an occassional sucker-hole or two.

I've been patiently waiting for the opportunity to check out the Double 90 Bill D. masterfully crafted for me (merci beaucoup, Bill!), so clouds be darned... today was the day to christen my new baby (ah say amen, brothers and sisters!)

Not the type of day to expect any "keepers", but still a great opportunity to shake off the cabin-fever that has held a relentless grip on me. The mount was not polar aligned, so I needed to "chase" the target throughout the session (here, puppy puppy) and stiff breezes kicked up my sun-shield and head-covering like a mainsail and jib (argh matey!)

So, while nothing spectacular under such conditions, the setup does indeed work and wrung out some detail despite the contrary efforts of Mother Nature. Here's a quick crop, chop, and paste that will remain otherwise unprocessed:



And here's a few shots of the setup, with my new "Powered by Coronado" sun shield (I'll post links, so as to save dial-up users any angst):

http://www.astro-nut.com/sun-shield1.jpg
http://www.astro-nut.com/sun-shield2.jpg
http://www.astro-nut.com/sun-shield3.jpg
http://www.astro-nut.com/sun-shield4.jpg

I may not get the time or weather conditions to do any serious imaging before NEAF, but do heartily invite you to join me and many fellow solar-geeks at the NEAF Solar Star Party... c'mon down!

Cheers,

Paul

My long awaited AP 6-incher arrived today (WooHoo!), but don't hold your breath waiting for it to be put up for adoption.

It's quite an eyeful to look at, and I am champing at the bit to look through it and put this puppy to work... maybe even get back out there under the night-time sky (gasp!), though I am kinda' anxious to find a Baader wedge to plonk on.

Many thanks Roland, Marj, and the gang at AP for providing us with such fine equipment!

Cheers,

Paul

[COLOR="Red"][SIZE="Large"]!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!![/SIZE][/COLOR]




(ummm... in case you missed it, THAT is a mercury transit! )


Paul

Hi All,

(Please pardon the cross-post!)

Barlow Bob asked me to invite y'all over to take a peek at the NEAF Solar Star Party website:

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze29wzh/NSSP2005/nssp2005.htm

Gee, what a handsome group!

Cheers,

Paul

PS: It was great to see Ray Y. and some of the Anacortes team at NEAF this year!

Hi All,

(Please pardon the cross-post!)

Barlow Bob asked me to invite y'all over to take a peek at the NEAF Solar Star Party website:

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze29wzh/NSSP2005/nssp2005.htm

Gee, what a handsome group!

Cheers,

Paul

PS: It was great to see Ray Y. and some of the Anacortes team at NEAF this year!

Hi Y'all,

First and foremost, I would be remiss if I did not give heartfelt thanks to Gerry, our friends at Coronado and Meade, and all the particpants that made HOTS 2005 such a special and memorable event. We DEFINITELY have to do this again!!!

Sorry for the delay in posting this, but I'm older and far less agile than Tom!

We were able to con, er... "convince" Bill Rich from Meade to overnight a DSI Pro (as in monochromatic camera) to the HOTS venue, as it seemed to be well suited to the task of capturing ultra-narrowband images.

We excitedly looked forward to the test drive, as with the DSI Pro ALL pixels are available when imaging monochromatic sources such as H-a or CaK (unlike RGB/CMYK arrays which only allocate a small percentage). The proverbial icing on the cake was that exposures could be cranked down as far as 1/10,000th of a sec, letting us negate the need for additional "knock-down" filters, better freezing atmospheric bugaboos (WooHoo!)

Scampering about like schoolkids doing homework on the bus TO school (oops?), from the time we loaded the software till the last frame was taken was less than 60 minutes (huff, puff, puff!)

Clouds threatened to thwart our efforts, so we "shot" through a window (duh?) looking for holes in the clouds.

Without further ado, here's a single (as in unstacked) image from one of the sets, (chosen at random):



We used a CEMAX barlow lens to reach focus, but it looks like a relay-free setup may be possible (more info soon!)

BTW, Meade provided very portable mounts for the PST H-a/Cak scopes that when level and the time/date is entered are ready to track the sun... hot stuff!

Oh... Tom, Hiram, and I were the thieves and none of us had imaged with the PST CaK or had ever used a DSI prior to this 60 minute marathon. Hmmm, I just may get some of this stuff for my own arsenal.


Cheers,

Paul

PS: some pics of the event:
http://www.astro-nut.com/Hots2005/index.htm

PPS: Our only connection to Coronado and Meade is that we LOVE playing with their goodies!

Aloha... it's great to be back in the saddle and playing in the sun again, even if only for a
few days (then back to work... sigh!)

I've been running a few tests with some (modified) DSI Pros and PSTs, but just HAD to gather a
few mucho-grande scale high res shots with the big rig while out there. I'm still trying to eradicate
the Newton's rings issues ( http://www.astro-nut.com/sun-ha-newtons-rings.html ) with the SBIG
ST11K camera, and had a modicum of success.

Rather than introduce the additional complexity of working with the double 90 (tuning and hot spots),
I opted to shoot with a single SM90 and BF30 (too lazy!) Here's a reduced size version of one of the
images (for dial-up users)



A larger version can be found at:

http://www.astro-nut.com/sun-disk06jul31.jpg (775K, but should be worth the wait)

The print version disk of the master is over 36 inches in diameter... WooHoo! Too bad the sun was relatively
quiet during the session.

Image details: AP Traveler with SM90/BF30 through a 4X TeleVue Powermate and SBIG ST11K.
Single image processed via three separate paths (disk, hairy limbs, and proms) with Images Plus and
Adobe PhtoShop CS.

BTW: My AP600 mount is now running flawlessly... a long standing stalling issue is corrected.
Thanks to Wally from AP for suggesting the fix (installed an additional thermistor).

Cheers,

Paul

Hi All,

Deep in the throes of a heat-wave here, but y'all convinced me to do a peek and tweak with one of the
PSTs this afternoon (a final hurrah, then tomorrow it's back to a 7day/12hr work-week... sigh).

The high level of humidity and attendant haze disuaded me from setting up for Ha, and opted to
try the wider-band CaK.

Here's the result:



Image details: Off-the-shelf (unmodified)CaK PST with modified nose-piece Meade DSI Pro (love that
little DSI Pro!):. Disk exposure 0.0028/ Prom exposure: 0.0625, processed with ImagesPlus and combined
with Adobe PhotoShop CS.

Cheers,

Paul