SolarMax III Etalon question

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SJohnson
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SolarMax III Etalon question

Post by SJohnson »

Hello all!

I have the factory Double stacked SolarMax III and I have just been removing the first etalon to take images single stacked. I tried removing both and then putting on just the primary (which has the rich view tuner) as the single stack, but the image doesn't tune/focus well. I'm thinking it is because the ~4mm ring that is used to attach the two etalons in DS setup isn't allowing the etalon to screw all the way onto the objective. 

Does anyone own a SMIII and know if it is possible to remove that ring (and be able to put it back) so I can use the rich view tuner as the primary etalon as a SS or will the rich view tuner not be that helpful? It appears to be threaded looking at the other etalon. I've tried to twist it off by hand but I'm a little leery of taking pliers to it.
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Re: SolarMax III Etalon question

Post by Montana »

A very warm and sunny welcome :hamster:

Looks like a tough question, hopefully someone will know the answer soon :)

Alexandra


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marktownley
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Re: SolarMax III Etalon question

Post by marktownley »

Hi there and welcome to the forum.

I would suggest you are unable to get the external etalon to tune as it is the 'double stack' etalon, it is designed to be used for this only. If you want to use an etalon on another scope you need to use the inner (or primary) etalon as this is the one designed to be used in single stack.

Mark


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DeepSolar64
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Re: SolarMax III Etalon question

Post by DeepSolar64 »

I have two SolarMax II scopes so they are different. One etalon is internal. Keep us posted on how the SolarMax III does. I have been quite curious on this scope for awhile.


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Re: SolarMax III Etalon question

Post by MalVeauX »

Heya,

Your primary etalon is the one without the rich view, just the tilt t-max. That etalon is likely somewhere around 0.7A~0.8A or so. It should be closest to being on band with minimal tilt. If you want single stack, that's the etalon to use.

The second etalon, with the t-max tilter and the rich view tuning ring is your double-stack filter. This one is likely closer to 0.8~0.9A. It will likely be low contrast when using on its own and hard to tune because it's so close to 1A that too much continuum light is bleeding through and killing contrast. These lesser etalons are used for double stacks because they work for that, but not for primary use. When you tilt, you are tuning towards blue, so you rich view back towards the red wing to get it back on band.

Very best,


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Re: SolarMax III Etalon question

Post by SJohnson »

Thank you everyone! That makes a lot of sense, I had been assuming that the etalons were the same and could be interchanged. I'm glad I didn't try harder to take the ring off 🤣

I appreciate the answers and looking forward to more learning here!

Shawn


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