[SJAAboard] our solar scope's H-alpha filter

[Gary Mitchell]

Jim Van Nuland wrote:
>             The alternate is the PST, which is a useful instrument,
> but more difficult to use and not as versatile.  It costs twice as
> much as the repair.

I beg to differ about those little PSTs being useful.  I looked through
a couple of them at Houge a while back (solar event) and was NOT
impressed.  They're too small, the image is too dim.  Someone had one
of the bigger versions there--it was *much* better--at least as good
as our solar scope.  But it costs a lot more, if I recall correctly
it's something like $2500.   You get what you pay for.

By the way, I did a little poking around on the Daystar web site,
(www.daystarfilters.com) specifically the repair section.  Those are
delicate things, and expensive!  Apparently we're getting away fairly
cheap at $250 for an optical stack repair job.  Evidently the central
Etalon filter must be OK, otherwise it'd start at twice that.  (See
the bottom of: www.daystarfilters.com/dontopen.shtml)

I don't remember what the bandwidth is on our filter.  Since we can
easily see detail in the sun's surface, it must be 0.6 Angstroms or
better.  So a new one would cost $2600 or more.
(www.daystarfilters.com/hydrogen.shtml)

Gary