Market study for large solar telescope, feedback welcome

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fjabet
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Market study for large solar telescope, feedback welcome

Post by fjabet »

Hi all,

my company is starting a new product development with a friendly company named Skyvision specialized in high end telescopes.
We are thinking about a 355mm aperture telescope able to handle Ha/CaK/WL continuum with a better than diffraction limited optical quality (real quality WFE measure, not Foucault measurement...) even in the CaK band (that's less than 100nm WFE PTV error wich is very good) and a professional surface quality (less than 2 A).
The design would be based upon a classical Cassegrain (real parabolic/hyperbolic Cassegrain) with a specific implementation to transmit 85% in HA band and 20% in the CaK, plus less than 4% in continuum. This design doesn't have any spherochromatism beeing a pure reflector.
The telescope would also have a telecentric amplifier to F/D 27.5 that would cover a full 32mm Daystar etalon with a perfect correction as we do actually with the HAT telescope.
The design is different from the HaT (coated SCT+Telecentric) because SCT the design show a strong SA in the blue/UV band and therefore the HaT can only handles Ha and continuum.
For CaK the telescope would be usable at its native F/D that would be about 15 to show about 25% obstruction.

The targeted price would be about 12K€ inc VAT, the user having to use his own Etalon (Daystar, PST etalon, Lunt 35 or 50mm, whatever without a central obstruction).
The technical pre-study has been done, the telescope design is mostly ready.

The last question is : is there a market for this kind of product ?
The market demand for the HaT is much larger than we expected and we are even starting to deliver the 11" version with the next batch in december that would be the largest actual Ha telescope in the world. So maybe after all there is another market requirement in the very high end/institutional segment for more than 280mm aperture ?

Thanks for your feedback,

Frédéric Jabet, Owner of Airylab.


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Bill Edelen
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Re: Market study for large solar telescope, feedback welcome

Post by Bill Edelen »

Sounds interesting although out of my budget.
How much is that in US $ ?
Can't wait for results to be posted.
Good wishes with project.


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Re: Market study for large solar telescope, feedback welcome

Post by swisswalter »

Hi Frédéric

a very interesting project. I hope for you that the market study will reveal enough interest in the scope, so you can start with the first run.

I guess at my place I have to few days in a year to really use it with benefit because of the seeing conditions. Above that I would have to upgrade the mount. All together I would end up in spending 20K$ and that I'm not willing to spend at the moment.

good luck with the project


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Re: Market study for large solar telescope, feedback welcome

Post by Valery »

There are MUCH easier and cheaper ways here. Does not include HAT however.


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Re: Market study for large solar telescope, feedback welcome

Post by fjabet »

@Walter : a good site is a prerequisite for such a telescope, although I had conditions during fall that made me regret not to have a larger aperture than 200mm :)

@Valery : well, the cost of a high end 14" classical Cassegrain without adaptation is already in those price range.
The only alternative I see would be a C14 HaT, but it would only cope with HA and Continuum and the coating cost is very expansive above 280mm.

We are not in the same optical quality range than chinese optics with Skyvision optics, is rather close to professional optics for the surface roughness.

BTW a Lunt 230 is over $25K, this 355 would be much cheaper :)


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Re: Market study for large solar telescope, feedback welcome

Post by marktownley »

Very interesting, and interesting to see how it develops, but, for me, I don't have the seeing conditions for such an aperture or the cash...


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Re: Market study for large solar telescope, feedback welcome

Post by Montana »

:bow :bow :bow amazing! if only I could win the lottery and I lived in Tenerife :)

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Re: Market study for large solar telescope, feedback welcome

Post by jp-brahic »

I am fully interested!!! :), I hope that the project will succeed because the mechanics and the optics from Skyvision it's the top!!!

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Re: Market study for large solar telescope, feedback welcome

Post by pbsastro »

Well, 355mm for CaK seems a little too much. Resolution is linear dependent on the wavelength, so for the same aperture CaK (392nm) has 1.67x more resolution than Ha (656nm).
Hey, I'm the guy who thinks 150mm Ha is much better then 90mm Ha, and that 200mm Ha is much better than 150mm Ha. But 355mm CaK, well maybe on a specialized observatory in the top of a special big mountain.


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