I have had my PST now for two months and every time I observe old Sol, Im amazed at the detail available with this 40MM scope! Very well constructed, GREAT price and a pleasure to use! Thanks CORONADO!

A member of my club purchased a PST for his own use after looking through my SM40/Tak 60 combo and we got together one mostly cloudy afternoon for a shootout. I was amazed at how little the PST gave up to the SM40 in terms of surface detail. The SM40 won out in terms of fineness of detail on plage and filaments, but the PST was a marvel at teasing out details in the prominences at a higher power and brightness than my SM40 was capable of. Plage was barely visible in quiet regions, but spiculation was vivid. When properly tuned, the stacked PST shows nice prominences, but the surface detail jumps out at you. The disk looked 3-D. Previously unseen plage leapt into detail with a lot of filaments that were simply not visible before. I now have a PST of my own, and the SM40 is on the front of it whenever possible. If I want to go in at higher power on prominences, the PST is used as is, either with a 12mm Cemax or a 9mm ortho. When I want to see the whole disk in the sweet spot, I use a 15mm plossl. The combination of the two filters does create a sweet spot, where the center of the FOV is amazing in detail and then tails off as one goes to the edge of the disk. A 15mm eyepiece really puts the whole disk squarely in the sweet spot. A mount with slow-motion controls is a must for keeping the image there. The image through the stacked PST is a trifle dim, but no dimmer than the view through my SM40/TV76, and massively more detailed. I need to use the SM40s T-max tuner to shove the secondary ghost image out of the FOV so it does not interfere with viewing. This partially blocks the built-in Sol Ranger finder, but not entirely. I put the suns image at the bottom center of the Sol Ranger window and then move the scope up to meet the sun. As the image disappears from the Sol Ranger, it appears in the scope. The PST is small, portable, relatively inexpensive and the views are worth a million words. Go get one. Now.

I have been doing white light solar observing for about 5 years. I enjoy watching sunspots evolve over a period of time. I never had a lot of interest in the h-alpha equipment out there. That was until I could actually afford a piece of h-alpha equipment. After speaking with a resource at Anacortes I decided to go ahead purchase this little scope. I had no illusions about the quality of the image I was going to get. I knew there were issues with the image being small and in some cases even having a ghost image around the limb. I set up the PST on a good camera mount. The nice little embedded sol ranger had the sun in the fov in nothing flat. I put in the 12mm eyepiece that came with it and held my breath. As I focused the image I could not believe what I was seeing. Prominences. Three of them. Hanging right off the limb. With a small twist of the tuning ring, I found amazing detail on the surface. Sun spots were no longer the focus. The amazing detail of the faculae, prominences and flares blew me away. As I watched the prominences seemed to disappear. I found that as the image moved away from the center it changed. Sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. But a simple tap of the scope to re-center the image brought back all the subtle detail. The double image was there but did not cause me any trouble. It was not bright enough to wash out the prominences. In fact, if I had not been looking for it, I doubt I would have even noticed it. I have used everything from a 40mm plossl to a 6mm Radian and all gave great images. Thanks to the PST, I will now get no sleep at star parties.

The Coronado PST is a small refracting telescope that allows observation of the sun in the light of hydrogen-alpha. At $500, the PST makes h-alpha astronomy available to regular people. This robust scope is made entirely of metal. It provides nice sharp views. With good observing conditions, I can see the chromosphere as a spiky fringe along the edge of the solar disk, and I can also see surface details such as filaments. Prominences appear as phantasmagoric shapes suspended against the black of space. When visible, flares resemble bright white patches superimposed on the chromosphere. Owning the PST has made me feel like an active participant in solar astronomy. No other celestial object exhibits the capacity for rapid change like the sun does. The sun’s appearance also changes as it rotates. New active regions and sunspots appear, drift across, and disappear within a few days. These active regions may spawn flares that cause disruptions on earth and aurora displays. The PST allows a front row seat for all of this action. I believe that the PST is the greatest innovation to enter amateur astronomy since the advent of the Dobsonian telescope.

This little scopes is truly amazing. The prominences are really stunning and it really is posslbe to detect change in them over the course of minutes, not hours. The PST also holds magnification fairly well, despite its small apeture. Ive used 6mm Supermono during times of good seeing (also that seems to be the absolute limit). The only tiny thing I can say against it is that the details seem to dissapear if the sun is not exactly centered in the fov. Of course thats extremely minor since its very easy to track the sun at such low magnifications. Coronado has made sub-angstrom h-alpha affordable for all.

After a four month wait me PST arrive two days ago. Another two day wait for the sky to clear here. About 30 minutes ago I experienced First Light. All I can say it was worth the wait!!! Setup and operation of this scope is a snap!!! Absolutely outstanding image after a minimum amount of tuning!!! If you a serious or just a casual amateur astronomer, do youurself a favor and get this scope!!!

The PST is truly a technological breakthrough in the solar h-alpha telescope market. As a current owner of a Coronado Maxscope 60, which itself is an incredible scope, I had expected the views in my much lower priced PST to be noticeable lower in quality, due to its advertised <1.0A bandpass, and 40mm aperature. What I saw when I looked through the eyepiece of my PST for the first time was downright shocking! The view was simply incredible, to say the least. Disk detail was striking, with h-alpha disk details like filaments, nice and dark, and plage, nice and bright. The overall brightness of the image was very comfortable to view with my 12mm Cemax eyepiece, which yield the best performance of the Cemax eyepieces I tried. I would definitely recommend getting the Coronado custom hardcase for your PST along with the complete set of Cemax eyepieces & barlow. As an h-alpha enthusiast who has owned many different h-alpha scopes and filters over the past 15 years, both from DayStar and Coronado, I would have to say that the Coronado PST, hands down, gives the best performance with respect to its price. Its performance rivals h-alpha viewing systems costing thousands more. At only $499, it is a bargain you shouldnt pass up.