Early morning sun Daystar SS60DS

[Averton]

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.

[Averton]

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 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!!

[DeepSolar64]

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

[Averton]

Its a Skywatcher EvoStar. Also a pretty reasonable scope

[DeepSolar64]

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

[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

[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

[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.