Buying the Coronado PST (Personal Solar Telescope)

Buying the Coronado PST (Personal Solar Telescope)
by Bill Webster

The first time I looked through a telescope with a hydrogen-alpha filter on it I knew I wanted one. The view of the sun showing prominences and filaments was very captivating. The flares and active regions on the sun’s surface was something I had never seen before. The major problem for me was the price. The least expensive H-alpha filter costs around $2,500 and that was just a filter! You still had to have a telescope and some kind of mount to hold it place.

So when Coronado first announced they were selling a solar telescope (PST) with a built in H-alpha filter plus an eyepiece priced under $500. I was skeptical at best. I envisioned a PVC tube with a glued on filter that if you strained hard enough you might see something that looked like the sun. I made up my Christmas list this year with only one item on it, the Personal Solar Telescope by Coronado. Well Santa came and went and no PST was left under my tree. The nice thing about being born in January is you get to ask again for anything you didn’t get for Christmas. So I talked my wife into letting me go to the Winter Star Party 2005 (WSP05) and see first hand how good this little PST was. I know it’s a week of fun and sun in southern Florida during February, but I needed to do some market research on the PST. At least that was the idea. I was also hoping to save on the shipping and handling since Coronado was going to have a vendor booth at WSP05. Well Coronado did have a booth at WSP05 but they wouldn’t let you buy a PST there. You still had to have it shipped out of California. What a let down all that sun and no PST of my own, yet. I had to settle for looking though all the other Coronado H-alpha telescopes.

Coronado offers a full line of H-alpha scopes. They have the PST plus the Solarmax 40/60/70/90 &140 mm telescopes. They are all very nice to look at and look through. The views are stunning. I however was interested in their entry level solar scope the PST. So I waited until I got home from WSP05 and ordered mine from B&H Photo and Video out of New York (www.bhphotovideo.com). I also ordered the travel case to go with it. The PST is sold with a 12mm Kellner eyepiece that even the Coronado sales reps says should be upgraded. It just happens that Coronado offers an eyepiece upgrade for $120 but if you purchase the upgrade at the same time as the scope you can get it for $99. I asked the sales rep what was special about this $99 eyepiece. He said it is specially coated in red for daytime viewing verses green coating for nighttime viewing. It didn’t understand this so I asked Al Nagler if he had an opinion about red coatings and daytime viewing. Al’s response was blunt as usual. He said it was a bunch of crap. He did offer to sell me his Tele-Vue 8 to 24mm zoom nagler for $199. I passed on his offer and bought a Tele-Vue knock off 8 – 24mm zoom for $99. It’s a real nice eyepiece. All I needed now was for my PST to be delivered.

The travel case and PST arrived in separate boxes both were very well packed. I almost had to pry the PST from its foam packing. I already had a camera tripod so I quickly set up the scope in my driveway. I just hoped there would be something on the sun to see. It didn’t take more then a few seconds to notice a small prominence. I adjusted the focus and even more detail came out. This thing really works! There was also a sun spot that I was able to see. Viewing sun spots with the PST is very different than using a white light filter. They don’t stand out quite as well as the white light filter shows them. But you certainly can see them. I have not been able to do photography with the PST. I do not think it is designed for it. This is a very simple scope to use. It has a built in finder that makes aligning on the sun very simple. The whole scope can be set up and taken down in less than two minutes. If you want a quick glimpse of the sun this is the scope for you. It has quickly become my most used telescope. I would recommend it to anyone who wants an entry level H-alpha scope. The problem is just like night time viewing you quickly get aperture fever, bigger is always better.

The official features & specifications for the PST are as follows.

Features:

• Internal optical re-focusing mechanism provides compatibility with most conventional eyepieces, Built in Sun finder, Telescope body does not have moving or extending parts, Objective threaded to take the SolarMax40 and create 0.6A telescope.
• Type – Sub angstrom Hydrogen Alpha Telescope for solar observing
• Fl – 400mm
• Aperture – 40mm
• Ratio – F/10
• Wavelength – 656.3nm (h-alpha)
• Bandwidth – <1.0A