Experienced amateur astronomers know not to expect too much when they look through a scope; they know it takes time and patience to tease out details. But that was not my experience with the Coronado. I took one look and could see a huge prominence at the 2 o'clock position on the sun and a large group between the 7 and 8 position. A tweaked the tuner and they jumped in brightness and detail. Active area 1130 was clearly visible, with significant amounts of surface detail.
I tried to image with a T-adapter and with a barlow--no luck on getting focus, but I was on a tight schedule, so I stuck the camera up to the eyepiece and took an exposure. The result (after some cropping and a little enhancement) is below:
So from unpacking to the above in under 5 minutes--not too bad! The pic does not show all the surface detail visible to the eye, nor the delicate structures visible in the prominence itself. But for a quick eyepiece shot, it gives you an idea of what this scope can do.
The supplied 12mm kellner works well--and even better with a 2x barlow, which gave superb views.
I didn't want to pack up and return to work--but needs must!
I've owned a lot of scopes and experienced the joy of moving from a 90 mm scope to a 10 inch. But nothing compares to the experience I had with the PST. It's hard to put into words what it is like to see the sun as a "living" entity--changing in front off your eyes. Again--the level of detail I could see was on a par with some of the best PST images you will see on the web--even better, I would say. This little scope opens up a whole new world of astronomy and I can't wait to do more with it.
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