Glossary | Telescopes | General | Series | PST
With the introduction of the Personal Solar Telescope, Coronado has achieved a stroke of genius: the safe observation of the Sun's chromosphere in H-alpha light finally became affordable for all star fans.
The popularity of this small, easy-to-use solar telescope is undiminished to this day because no other H-Alpha filter has ever matched its price, and the optical quality of the PST has been consistently maintained at a high level since its introduction.
The PST allows all nature lovers to observe the active Sun’s filaments, prominences and other phenomena!
The Sun in H-alpha
This image of the Sun was created with a PST DoubleStack and a simple planetary camera.
With the Personal Solar Telescope, the Sun’s chromosphere becomes visible. This layer of the solar atmosphere lies above the photosphere, which we see with, for example, eclipse glasses or a white-light filter.
The famous dark sunspots can be seen on the photosphere. However, the number of sunspots fluctuates a great deal over an eleven-year cycle, so that the Sun in white light can also be quite boring. On the other hand, the chromosphere displays a certain amount of activity almost all the time, so there is always something to see with an H-alpha solar telescope! This image by Mick Nicholls gives you good impression of what can be achieved.
The dark filaments on the Sun show themselves as prominences on the edge of the solar disc.