Skywatcher 102/500 HA PST Mod

Frankenscope? Let's see it!***be advised that NOTHING in this forum has been safety tested and you are reading and using these posts at your own peril. blah, blah, blah... dont mess around with your eyesight when it comes to solar astronomy. Use appropriate filtration at all times...
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andreahaku

Skywatcher 102/500 HA PST Mod

Post by andreahaku »

Hi everyone,

there's a new baby in town :D

Using the same pieces I used for the Vixen A80M and Celestron Omni 120 XLT PST Mods, this morning I converted my Skywatcher 102/500 into a HA telescope.

I putted the D-ERF inside the dewcap. Removed the focuser and used the Vixen A80M alluminium tube adapter this time "inside" the Skywatcher tube so that I can easily put the "PST Mod" block in it. Measured prime focus distance and placed the etalon at the right distance. Now I know well how to do that :D

Here's the result:









I made same visual observation with it this morning and it works great. The good is that I can easily watch full disk in goo details with it.

No recording so no example image but I'll take for sure in the coming days.

It's incredible how using the same pieces I can do 3 different setups good for every conditions :D


- Skywatcher 102/500 (HA aperture 50mm)
- Vixen A80M 80/910 (HA aperture 70mm)
- Celestron Omni XLT 120 (HA aperture 100mm)

I'm very happy with them all.


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marktownley
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Re: Skywatcher 102/500 HA PST Mod

Post by marktownley »

Excellent! You are having alot of fun with these scope mods! :cheer:


Image
http://brierleyhillsolar.blogspot.co.uk/
Solar images, a collection of all the most up to date live solar data on the web, imaging & processing tutorials - please take a look!
andreahaku

Re: Skywatcher 102/500 HA PST Mod

Post by andreahaku »

Definetly a lot!

It's like playing with Lego :D

Just kidding but it's really like that. I like the modularity. The "core" is always the same. You simply modify the aperture by using a different "donor" scope.

Once you understand how it works is very easy to do and results are very good at least for me.
But I've never seen personally other HA scopes other than my original Coronado PST. Never used a Lunt (big or small) so can't really say.

Anyway... this costs zero so surely worth trying and using it.

I really hope to put in on some serious imaging test soon so I can compare it with my original PST images and see how better it is ;)


peter drew

Re: Skywatcher 102/500 HA PST Mod

Post by peter drew »

Andrea. Although your new "baby" will work well and give you a smaller solar image, the PST etalon at the recommended 200mm position, will vignet your front aperture to 50mm.


andreahaku

Re: Skywatcher 102/500 HA PST Mod

Post by andreahaku »

I know... infact I consider it a 50mm scope. But it's a 50% surface (and so details) more than a regular PST ;)
Also I placed the 75mm D-ERF (70mm aperture) cell inside the dewcap so I'm already reducing the aperture myself.


peter drew

Re: Skywatcher 102/500 HA PST Mod

Post by peter drew »

Great stuff Andrea, I should have known you knew :bow: I used to have a Sky 90 set up in this way before I realised this. There used to be a conversion kit on the UK market for a 80mm F5 scope, the resulting aperture was 40mm, hardly much of an upgrade for the original PST!.


andreahaku

Re: Skywatcher 102/500 HA PST Mod

Post by andreahaku »

Great stuff Andrea, I should have known you knew :bow:

Sorry I didn't want to be "rude" :D

Sometimes my english is a little raugh.
Almost everything I've leaned about PST mods comes from people like you with much more experience than me and most of them belong to this community so I can only say thanks everyone :bow:
Sorry again :)


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