PHaST Project

A Portable H-alpha Solar Telescope


The Portable H-alpha Solar Telescope is a personal project based on the Coronado MaxScope 40. The immediate goal of the project is to observe the June 8, 2004 transit of Venus. To image the Sun I use an SAC Imaging SAC IVB camera. The telescope is mounted on an Orion EQ-2 equatorial mount with motor drive.

The planned observing site for the transit is my cousin's house in Dubai. I'm testing the telescope in Big Bear City and Riverside, California.

Here is the first picture taken with the SAC IV B camera on March 27, 2004 from Riverside. The filter was a bit off-band. I have not applied flat field correction or limb darkening subtraction.

Here is what the portable setup looks like. For the transit I'll most likely be substituting a tabletop tripod instead of the full-size tripod shown here.

PHaST and the Transit of Venus

Specifications of PHaST system


TelescopeCoronado MaxScope 40
Objective diameter40 mm
Effective focal length*264 mm
CameraSAC Imaging SAC IV B
Detector size640 x 480 pixels, each 5.6 micron square
Bit depth 8 bits
FilterCoronado full-aperture FP etalon
Wavelength6563 angstroms
Bandpass0.7 angstrom
ComputerApple PowerBook G4
Control SoftwareEquinox, BTV Pro

* The telescope is f/10 (400 mm focal length). I'm using a focal reducer lens to change that to f/6.6 so that the solar image will fit on the detector.

More information to come...

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Comments:
John Varsik varsik@bbso.njit.edu
Last modified: April 21, 2004