Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

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Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by RodAstro »

Hi
I haven't posted any images for a while so thought I may as well pop these on after having some success with the Solar Scout.
Since getting this scope I have used the Quark unit on my 6" scope for high res imaging and it works quite well but as the SS60DS it has not been very good.
First the etalon is very patchy on the SS60DS but not on the 6", maybe the flats sort this in high res.
Secondly the focuser on the SS60DS is s..t the objective just wobbles around all over as you turn the focuser, this is due to the play in the focuser thread and the fact the thread is at the back of a very long tube that just amplifies the problem throwing the suns image all over the field as you focus.

Today though as the sun was being thrown about I noticed by luck a part of the field where the suns image was far more uniform/less patchy so after a bit of camera rotating and manoeuvring of the image (after the focuser had flopped) to the best bit I actually got a good image, well for this scope anyway.
Now I have to think of a way to sort the focuser.
The scope is also stopped down to 30mm to bring it to f31.

Daystar SS60DS, 0.5 focal reducer set to 0.8, ZWO ASI174
Fire Capture, AS3, ImPPG, Ps6.

Cheers Rod
Attachments
093419_ZWO ASI174MM_l4_ap1246 ImPPGsurface Ps6.jpg
093419_ZWO ASI174MM_l4_ap1246 ImPPGsurface Ps6.jpg (228.26 KiB) Viewed 929 times
093419_ZWO ASI174MM_l4_ap1246 ImPPGsunproms Ps6.jpg
093419_ZWO ASI174MM_l4_ap1246 ImPPGsunproms Ps6.jpg (263.32 KiB) Viewed 929 times
SS60DS full disk proms 20-6-22 9-35am.jpg
SS60DS full disk proms 20-6-22 9-35am.jpg (237.3 KiB) Viewed 929 times
093419_ZWO ASI174MM_l4_ap1246 ImPPGsurface Ps6RGB.jpg
093419_ZWO ASI174MM_l4_ap1246 ImPPGsurface Ps6RGB.jpg (341.66 KiB) Viewed 929 times
093419_ZWO ASI174MM_l4_ap1246 ImPPGsunproms Ps6RGB.jpg
093419_ZWO ASI174MM_l4_ap1246 ImPPGsunproms Ps6RGB.jpg (396.29 KiB) Viewed 929 times
SS60DS full disk proms 20-6-22 9-35am RGB.jpg
SS60DS full disk proms 20-6-22 9-35am RGB.jpg (347.65 KiB) Viewed 929 times


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by marktownley »

That's not a bad disk considering Rod. I had wondered how the focus worked on these and you've answered that ponder of mine...


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by RodAstro »

Hi
Thanks Mark, not to bad for a Quark as they are not really made for full disk.

The focusing is crude, it has a very large thread aluminium on aluminium with a lot of play.
The thread is at the back of the black tube where the grip is, there is no support from there on so the weight of the tube and objective just cause the tube with objective to flop about so no chance of optical alignment.
Even when you have focus, as the tube moves around on an EQ mount the image just flops about, (like an SCT but worse) the suns image then moves to a bad part of the etalon.
Anyway this evening I have done a little mod by mounting the scope on a Vixen rail and added a guide scope ring at the front of the tube with nylon tipped screws to support the tube.
The tube rotates nicely in the nylon for focusing so hopefully this works, I will try it in the morning.

Rod
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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by Petrus »

The wonderful result with the tiny SolarScout, Rod!

I have this scope too and was first annoyed by how stiff the focuser was. For imaging, there was no way to have a good final touch for the focus. After getting familiar with mod options for this scope's etalon, I did a thoughtful inspection of the scope, and unscrewing the part with the focuser and re-attaching it back made it move very smoothly.


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by MAURITS »

Beautiful results with the DS SolarScout.


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by RodAstro »

Thanks for your appreciation SassySun and Maurits, I'm quite pleased I have found a way to get it to work.

I have also taken the focuser apart cleaned out the sticky stuff called grease, seen the amount of play and just re greased it.
Yes it rotates fine and smooth but just moves the objective all over the place, after my simple mod using the guide scope ring it is now very stable and rotates very nicely.
Using it this morning though I found the next problem, that is the objective is not seated properly so as you turn the focuser the suns image scribes a circle in the field so the objective is way of alignment.
I'm guessing it is the machined seat for the objective is not square on, just got to decide how to approach this, probably use a dial gauge first to confirm this.

Anyway the first mod works nicely and I can now repeat the position for imaging as I have done this morning.
The nice thing is no flats are needed, the nightmare of full disk imaging.

Cheers Rod
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081635_ZWO ASI174MM_l4_ap1273 ImPPG Ps6.jpg
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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by marktownley »

Some of this Daystar stuff really is dog plop. I appreciate they are working to a price point but....


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by RodAstro »

Hi Mark
Yep to much money spent on appearance rather than function, a lot of the problems could have been sorted for very little money and better QC.

Last night I took out the Quark unit and put in a adapter I have made to hold an eyepiece the fitted a laser collimator.
The beam should just come back straight to its self but no it came back as two beams about halfway on its scale.
I then proceeded to rotate the focuser, remember the front is now held in place by the guide scope ring so no movement, the two returning laser beam dots just scribe a circle around the scale keeping the same distance away from the original beam showing the objective is way off square with the tube.
I tried loosening the objective and re seating several times but the returning beams just came back to the exact same place every time showing the objective seat is very badly machined.
All I can assume is the tube is machined one end in the lathe and the reversed and badly replaced in the lathe to machine the other end.
Such an easy thing to test for during assembly but I suppose that costs time = money.

But in comparison to a PST the PST is made better but the end result is I can see more detail in the Daystar ss60ds than any PST I have used or owned it just has the potential to be much better.

Rod


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by rigel123 »

Those look great Rod


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by marktownley »

RodAstro wrote: Wed Jun 22, 2022 1:11 pm Hi Mark
Yep to much money spent on appearance rather than function, a lot of the problems could have been sorted for very little money and better QC.

Last night I took out the Quark unit and put in a adapter I have made to hold an eyepiece the fitted a laser collimator.
The beam should just come back straight to its self but no it came back as two beams about halfway on its scale.
I then proceeded to rotate the focuser, remember the front is now held in place by the guide scope ring so no movement, the two returning laser beam dots just scribe a circle around the scale keeping the same distance away from the original beam showing the objective is way off square with the tube.
I tried loosening the objective and re seating several times but the returning beams just came back to the exact same place every time showing the objective seat is very badly machined.
All I can assume is the tube is machined one end in the lathe and the reversed and badly replaced in the lathe to machine the other end.
Such an easy thing to test for during assembly but I suppose that costs time = money.

But in comparison to a PST the PST is made better but the end result is I can see more detail in the Daystar ss60ds than any PST I have used or owned it just has the potential to be much better.

Rod
The frustrating Daystar conundrum :/


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by Averton »

Great work with the Scout. We like both your images with the Scout and the ones using the Quark on your other scopes.
Very interesting information regarding the quality issues. We have recently purchased a Solar Scout DS60 with the intention of double stacking it with a Lunt 40mm etalon (which we have working) and also plan to remove the Quark unit and use it with our 72ED. We had already read your posts, Rod, about the focal ratio of the unit and totally agree that it is unlikely to work well at F15.5. With the 40mm etalon stopping it down ours is operating around F23. Interesting, our focusser was very difficult to move at all and bound up at different places. On disassembly we found the male thread damaged in two places requiring careful filing work to repair. We also removed all the grease and replaced it with better quality lubricant and reassembled. It now moves smoothly. We have noticed image movement while focussing which brings us to the same issue you are now addressing. This may become a moot point if we finally just use the Quark on the 72ED. Our ideal final set up is the Quark on the 72ED with the Lunt etalon behind the Quark in an arrangement similar to Oak3's set up. Our only hesitation at this point is working out the distances required to achieve focus both with the Quark on its own and then double stacked. We have attached a recent image from our scope and a picture of the set up.
2022-06-21 full disk 10-06 small.jpg
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P1090665 small.JPG
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Clare & Peter


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by eroel »

Rod:
Very nice FD´s, good work on getting the setup to work better.
Thanks and best regards.
Eric.


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by RodAstro »

Thanks Eric, I was pleased to get that good a result.

Hi Clare and Peter
That's exactly the setup I have been thinking of with a Lunt 40 for full disks, nice to see someone has done it.
It seems to give a lot of contrast, and excellent filaproms, I was just wondering how it is visually in comparison to the single stack?
I see you have a tilter on there, I find I don't need it when using the reducer as the front curve of the reducer lens eliminates newton rings.

The 72ed should work well although you wont get a full disk even with a reducer as the disk wont fit through the etalon at 420mm Fl, I have been using my ST80 400mm Fl and the vignetting is quite extreme, you just get a full disk but with lots of limb darkening.
I would go for something bigger, a SW ST102 or 120 for some high res imaging.
I am using a ST102 for a portable scope stopped down to 70mm and that gives lovely surface views, especially with a bino head and full aperture really brings out the proms.
I'm also experimenting with a 1.5x barlow before the Quark on the ST102 to bring it to the magic F30 at full aperture and keep the scope relatively small.
The picture below is from a ST102 stopped to 70mm I have just setup with a new Quark for a friend, I used my ASI174 with the 0.8 reducer to see how good her Quark was, actually a very nice uniform one.

Rod
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135654_ZWO ASI174MM_l4_ap756 ImPPG Ps6flat RGB (3).jpg
135654_ZWO ASI174MM_l4_ap756 ImPPG Ps6flat RGB (3).jpg (681.77 KiB) Viewed 730 times


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by Oak »

Great shots. Adding a quark chromosphere to my Lunt 40 results in a very significant increase in contrast visually at the cost of some brightness. That's with the 4.2 x telecentric so not sure about the 60DS. Some day I'll get around to comparing front and rear placement of the Lunt 40 on a Quark setup with the same aperture. Putting the Lunt after the quark widens the bandpass so the views should be different.


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by RodAstro »

Hi Oak
The 60DS is a normal Quark with a 4.2 x telecentric, the edge of the etalon is just masked off a bit more than the stand alone Quark maybe to hide some edge defects but still has a throughput big enough for a ASI174 chip.
I would have though the Lunt etalon behind the Quark would work very similar to being on the front as it would be in the telecentric beam from the Quark.
The main thing it would allow though is its use on a much larger scope.
The hard part will be making a housing for the Lunt etalon that will support what comes after, I use bino heads a lot, quite heavy.

Cheers Rod


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by Oak »

I believe that air spaced etalons like the lunts will widen their fwhm in a telecentric beam vs a collimated one or in front position. Not sure how much that impacts the qualitative view when it's being used as a double stack. I'm also using binos almost exclusively so I had a metal enclosure machined to hold the Lunt 40 in place behind the Quark and provide enough strength to hold the remaining gear (posted over in the scope modification forum)
-Derek


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by RodAstro »

Hi Derek
I had read your posts just not put two and two together.
That's a very neat build and very sturdy.
Do you have any problems with your Quark flexing, I have mentioned in previous posts that the anti-tamper screw that holds the red etalon part to the telecentric unit is not the best design and can cause the etalon to tilt when weight is put on the back of the quark.
The telecentric unit has a series of threaded holes around it for the screw so when you screw the etalon red part on you tighten it up and then back off until the hole in the etalon unit meets with the nearest threaded hole in the telecentric unit the fit the screw.
On the three quarks I have used this has left the two parts loose on the main threads causing the tilt, I have just removed the screw and tightened the two parts together leaving the screw out.

Cheers Rod


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by Averton »

Hi Rod,

We are very happy with the Scout double stack set up thus far although still working through some issues with evenness of the full disk and interference patterns. The fitting of the etalon to the front was very easy. We 3D printed an adapter which is a friction fit in the front of the Scout. This allows the etalon to be rotated. For some reason this does make a difference in moving the centre of brightness and on the evenness of the disk even though the etalon gets rotated with focussing.
IMG_5057 small.JPG
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We cannot comment regarding visual as we don't use eyepieces for solar or any other astronomy. Our scopes are outside while we are comfortably inside viewing on a screen. What we can say is that the Lunt 40 single stack is vastly superior to the Scout DS60 single stack. We have posted a lot of single stack Lunt pictures on CN, often with good comments regarding such images from a 40mm SS scope. eg. https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/8275 ... re-clouds/
If we had purchased the Scout as our first solar scope we are reasonable certain that we would not have bothered going any further with solar. With the Scope wide open, the SS image on the Scout lacks surface detail on the disk. Having already read your posts before buying it, we immediately made a 40mm aperture mask which helps a lot but still nowhere near as good as the Lunt 40.
The tilt adapter is needed as we use an ASI178MM camera which is particularly prone to interference patterns. We had chosen this camera as it gives give good sampling for a full disk image on the Lunt 40. On the Scout we need to use a 0.5 focal reducer running at 0.5 which seems to be adding further issues.
Today we made up a jig to measure the run out on the Scout focus tube and was surprised to find that it was only 6thou which considering the length from the thread section, is probably as good as you are going to get. Of course, this still does not mean that the objective itself is true as its locating shoulder could be machined incorrectly.
P1090799 small.JPG
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P1090804 samll.JPG
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We are aware of the FOV with the 72ED and just wanted to use it for slightly closer up images than we are getting currently. Unfortunately we don't have a bigger refractor. Our only other scope is a 6" F10 SCT which presents issues of needing a reducer before the Quark otherwise you would be running at F42. It may be a consideration in the future depending on how our current set ups turn out.
Thanks for your helpful posts regarding the Scout!


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by DeepSolar64 »

Is the focuser on the DayStar SS60 any worse than the ones on the Coronado SolarMax II series? They can be hard to get a precise focus, especially using a monitor and have too much slop and play in them. Meade Coronado did wise up and put a better focuser on the SMIII.


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by DeepSolar64 »

MAURITS wrote: Tue Jun 21, 2022 7:57 am Beautiful results with the DS SolarScout.
Agreed!!


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by Oak »

RodAstro wrote: Sat Jul 02, 2022 7:44 am Hi Derek
I had read your posts just not put two and two together.
That's a very neat build and very sturdy.
Do you have any problems with your Quark flexing, I have mentioned in previous posts that the anti-tamper screw that holds the red etalon part to the telecentric unit is not the best design and can cause the etalon to tilt when weight is put on the back of the quark.
The telecentric unit has a series of threaded holes around it for the screw so when you screw the etalon red part on you tighten it up and then back off until the hole in the etalon unit meets with the nearest threaded hole in the telecentric unit the fit the screw.
On the three quarks I have used this has left the two parts loose on the main threads causing the tilt, I have just removed the screw and tightened the two parts together leaving the screw out.

Cheers Rod
Actually I did have exactly this issue, which I was able to correct after reading your post. So thanks for that. I've had the quark apart to measure it's FSR and FWHM with a hydrogen lamp so already had the correct torx bit. The retention screw itself seems like an afterthought to keep users from unscrewing the telecentric and inadvertently removing the blocking filter.


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by Oak »

Averton wrote: Sat Jul 02, 2022 1:32 pm
Our only other scope is a 6" F10 SCT which presents issues of needing a reducer before the Quark otherwise you would be running at F42. It may be a consideration in the future depending on how our current set ups turn out.
Thanks for your helpful posts regarding the Scout!
f42 at the quark etalon should be ideal actually. You would likely need a reducer before the camera though to achieve decent sampling. I also have a C6 SCT that I would love to try with the quark. The price of the required ERF is a bit of a barrier though. Particularly since seeing needs to be very good to use something that big and it could end up sitting unused .


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by Dennis »

Oak wrote: Sat Jul 02, 2022 3:17 pm
Averton wrote: Sat Jul 02, 2022 1:32 pm
Our only other scope is a 6" F10 SCT which presents issues of needing a reducer before the Quark otherwise you would be running at F42. It may be a consideration in the future depending on how our current set ups turn out.
Thanks for your helpful posts regarding the Scout!
f42 at the quark etalon should be ideal actually. You would likely need a reducer before the camera though to achieve decent sampling. I also have a C6 SCT that I would love to try with the quark. The price of the required ERF is a bit of a barrier though. Particularly since seeing needs to be very good to use something that big and it could end up sitting unused .
Can confirm that. F42 is ideal, a reducer should be only placed after the etalon.


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by RodAstro »

Hi Clare and Peter

You have a good focuser there, and a nice measuring setup, I think I will need a ruler not a dial gauge to measure my run out.
This is the second SS60DS I have had the first one was even worse, maybe Daystar are getting a handle on the QC with this scope and machining is improving.

When I was looking at getting a solar scope Lunt had just discontinued the Lunt 35 and no sign of anything to replace it from them.
Alternative option was a PST but had one and got board with it. What led me to the daystar 60 was the idea I could remove the Quark unit and with a little ingenuity put it on my 6" F15 Zeiss Coude, a perfect scope for solar, and put the SS60DS back together to take it on holiday.
I got my first one, opened the box and the SS60DS was in two parts, this confirmed it was easy to remove the Quark :lol: just four screws.
I put it back together tested it and found no tuning, I could see proms with no power but once powered nothing happened.
So I pondered what to do because it is quite a bit of money when all said an done, anyway I contacted FLO and they were very good and promised to check out the next shipment and send a good one, I am glad I went with this, it is very good on the 6", visually great, just needs a good flat for imaging.
That's why it has taken me a couple of years to mess about with the rest of it to get some reasonable full disk images.

As Denis has said F42 is about optimum but that depends on your seeing.
On my 6" F15 I have occasionally used F63 and when the seeing is good it is amazing but 90 percent of the time my seeing is bad so I run it at about F30 using a focal reducer before the Quark.
The focal reducer I used is a 0.75 camera focal reducer, three reasons for this, first I had one, secondly it is made to give the same back focus as the camera lens has without it so no cutting of the tube and thirdly it is four elements air spaced so no problem with heat that you have with normal reducers with bonded lenses.
The recommended setup for my scope was to get a Quark Combo and a Baader TZ2, this cost three times the price of the SS60DS at the time, I have used this setup though on my 6" F15 as my friend has this setup and I cant see any improvement.

The picture shows the reducer I use, I just removed the lenses that are in their own housing and fitted them into the adapter I made for the SS60DS Quark unit.

As for an ERF I don't use one with the 6" just a UV/IR in front of the quark and reducer.
Be Carful with the SCT though the light baffle at the secondary may be plastic or if metal it may melt the plastic secondary housing when it heats up, you really need a all metal secondary housing, my friend uses a 7" Rumak with no front mounted ERF for many hours at a time but it has a all metal secondary housing.

Rod
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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by Averton »

Oak wrote: Sat Jul 02, 2022 3:17 pm
f42 at the quark etalon should be ideal actually. You would likely need a reducer before the camera though to achieve decent sampling. I also have a C6 SCT that I would love to try with the quark. The price of the required ERF is a bit of a barrier though. Particularly since seeing needs to be very good to use something that big and it could end up sitting unused .
Thanks Derek. Our next step is to work with the 72ED. The 6" SCT is definitely in the future and may not occur, for the same reason you have mentioned, finding a suitable ERF at an affordable price.


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by Averton »

Dennis wrote: Sat Jul 02, 2022 3:54 pm
Can confirm that. F42 is ideal, a reducer should be only placed after the etalon.
Thanks Dennis. Yes, after the etalon is the go. We really haven't done much planning or thinking about this set up yet as it is a distant future possibility only. We will see how we go with the 72ED before anything else.


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by Averton »

RodAstro wrote: Sat Jul 02, 2022 5:57 pm Hi Clare and Peter

You have a good focuser there, and a nice measuring setup, I think I will need a ruler not a dial gauge to measure my run out.
This is the second SS60DS I have had the first one was even worse, maybe Daystar are getting a handle on the QC with this scope and machining is improving.

When I was looking at getting a solar scope Lunt had just discontinued the Lunt 35 and no sign of anything to replace it from them.
Alternative option was a PST but had one and got board with it. What led me to the daystar 60 was the idea I could remove the Quark unit and with a little ingenuity put it on my 6" F15 Zeiss Coude, a perfect scope for solar, and put the SS60DS back together to take it on holiday.
I got my first one, opened the box and the SS60DS was in two parts, this confirmed it was easy to remove the Quark :lol: just four screws.
I put it back together tested it and found no tuning, I could see proms with no power but once powered nothing happened.
So I pondered what to do because it is quite a bit of money when all said an done, anyway I contacted FLO and they were very good and promised to check out the next shipment and send a good one, I am glad I went with this, it is very good on the 6", visually great, just needs a good flat for imaging.
That's why it has taken me a couple of years to mess about with the rest of it to get some reasonable full disk images.

As Denis has said F42 is about optimum but that depends on your seeing.
On my 6" F15 I have occasionally used F63 and when the seeing is good it is amazing but 90 percent of the time my seeing is bad so I run it at about F30 using a focal reducer before the Quark.
The focal reducer I used is a 0.75 camera focal reducer, three reasons for this, first I had one, secondly it is made to give the same back focus as the camera lens has without it so no cutting of the tube and thirdly it is four elements air spaced so no problem with heat that you have with normal reducers with bonded lenses.
The recommended setup for my scope was to get a Quark Combo and a Baader TZ2, this cost three times the price of the SS60DS at the time, I have used this setup though on my 6" F15 as my friend has this setup and I cant see any improvement.

The picture shows the reducer I use, I just removed the lenses that are in their own housing and fitted them into the adapter I made for the SS60DS Quark unit.

As for an ERF I don't use one with the 6" just a UV/IR in front of the quark and reducer.
Be Carful with the SCT though the light baffle at the secondary may be plastic or if metal it may melt the plastic secondary housing when it heats up, you really need a all metal secondary housing, my friend uses a 7" Rumak with no front mounted ERF for many hours at a time but it has a all metal secondary housing.

Rod
Thanks Rod for the additional information.
We have come into astronomy later in life in retirement and are very surprised with the QC of the equipment. We have seen a few other astronomy people refer to purchasing equipment as the "astro lottery". There is nothing that we have previously been involved with that has been any where near as bad. You regularly hear of people having to take things back and the advice on forums is to only purchase from places with a no questions return policy. No such thing exists in Australia! Most of the things that we have purchased, we have had to remedy issues from minor loose or missing screws to rewiring electronics and machining replacement parts. At least it gives us plenty to do :)
As we have mentioned, the 6" SCT project is very much a possible only future idea. We'll see how we go with the 72ED first.
The Zeiss Coude looks like an impressive bit of kit!!


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by DeepSolar64 »

Which 72ED? I have an Astro-Tech AT72EDII. It’s a nice little scope.


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Astro-Tech AT72EDII with Altair solar wedge
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Losmandy AZ8 Alt/Az Mount
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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by Averton »

Its a Skywatcher EvoStar. Also a pretty reasonable scope :)


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by DeepSolar64 »

I almost bought one of those but settled on the AT72EDII instead.


Lunt 8x32 SUNoculars
Orion 70mm Solar Telescope
Celestron AstroMaster Alt/Az Mount
Meade Coronado SolarMax II 60 DS
Meade Coronado SolarMax II 90 DS
Meade Coronado AZS Alt/Az Mount
Astro-Tech AT72EDII with Altair solar wedge
Celestron NexStar 102GT with Altair solar wedge
Losmandy AZ8 Alt/Az Mount
Sky-Watcher AZGTI Alt-Az GoTo mount
Cameras: ZWO ASI178MM, PGR Grasshopper, PGR Flea
Lunt, Coronado, TeleVue, Orion and Meade eyepieces

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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by RodAstro »

Yep The Zeiss is awesome to have
Sadly I built the observatory on the wrong side of the house for solar 16 years ago, its the best place for night time but I can only get the sun from 11am onwards so seeing is not the best.
With my lead filled pier it weights in at nearly 2ton and then there is the 3ton of reinforced concrete underground to support it so not easy to move.

At night though I don't have to go outside I just go through my conservatory into the attached observatory turn my music on and sit down to observe, wonderful.
In the winter I have a blanket over my legs with a little heater inside the blanket so quite toasty.

When observing the sun I'm sat in my pod with my back to the sun so I don't get to hot and in the shadow of the observatory wall I get much better contrast without external light spilling into the eyepieces so do get very good views.

Cheers Rod


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by RodAstro »

By the way Clare and Peter if you would like to have a look through the exact same scope as mine the observatory at the Brisbane Planetarium has one for public use. It's the only one I know of in the west open to the public.
As far as I know mine is one of three in private hands in the world and only two are working, the other is owned by Peter Ceravolo of Ceravolo Optical Systems.
Peter did a very good thread on cloudy nights of his restoration titled Zeiss Coudé telescope rebfurbish, it's a good read with loads of pictures of the internals.

Cheers Rod


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Re: Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

Post by Averton »

Hi Rod,

That scope isn't moving anywhere any time soon!
The Zeiss sounds very unique indeed. Unfortunately Brisbane is 1776km away from us so we can't just pop down to have a look at or through the scope. Who knows, maybe one day.
Your set up sounds even more civilised than ours.


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