Image thru Un-obstructed LS75F

Savio was kind enough to send in an image taken thru one of the special edition single stack LS75F's.

The image was taken via one of David Leong's 15 year old students, and although the filter had only just arrived, the initial shots are very good. I am looking forward to seeing just how good these images will get after a little practive with the filter..

The image was taken the the Lunt 75F mounted on a TMB 80-480 with 2X Barlow, and a DMK21AU04.AS

Unfortunately we sold out of these special edition 75s. There has been many querries for doublestacking the several we sold, and from people who have recently heard about the filters and were looking for availability..

Lunt Solar will be offering limited edition filters throughout the year. These filters will be announced in the upcoming community area of the website (coming next week). Our next special will certainly be a popular one. But, once their gone, their are gone.. At this time there are no plans to release the LS75F Un-obstructed as a standard product and we are not accepting orders for future limited runs ;)

I will be updating the status on the much anticipated LS152T later this week...

The One Thousand Dollar Giveaway!!!

The small contest we were running was closed at the end of 2009.

Thanks to everyone who submitted some great stories and images!!

We will be announcing the top winners over the next week or so, and will be including their submissions in this blog.

All recipients of the Lunt Gift Cards will be contacted via e-mail after their submissions have been posted..

Check back to see is your entry was chosen...

And PLEASE.. Keep the stories, event, and images coming in. We really look forward to receiving them.

Image by Eduard Garcia-Ribera

This image is one a few that were sent in by Eduard Garcia-Ribera a few days ago.

Our thanks goes out to Eduard for providing excellent images taken thru an LS100T.

Many may recognize this active region of just a short while ago. We certainly hope that the images will continue to be sent in as the Sun becomes more and more active..

To see more images by Eduard and/or to submit your own images for our photo gallery please visit the Lunt Solar Image Gallery at http://luntsolarsystems.com/galleries.html

We look forward to, and really appreciate, these amazing contributions... Thanks!

Nice Lift Off Today

We're back in the office !!!

I hope everyone had a chance to view the Sun at would be about 2:30 thru 3:30PM (Arizona Time).

A very nice prominence has been evolving all day, swirling and changing shapes. I have been testing since early this morning and have really enjoyed watching the transformations. I suspect that this is a precursor to an active region that is going to be rotating around in the next day or so :)

At about 3:oopm, it lifted off the surface and continued to move further and further away. I was amazed at how far it was from the Sun's surface, and yet was still very bright.

Upon setting up an LS60T/PT, I was able to see why.

An extremely thin tail was still "feeding" the cloud from the surface. By rotating the PT, you could actually follow the tail from the surface of the Sun thru the sky and into the suspended cloud of gas.

At 3:30pm I noted that the tail had broken, and as you would suspect, the gas cooled quickly.

It is certainly a reminder of the "good old days" that are quickly coming back, and we are all looking forward to the decade of 2010 which will be better known as the decade of Solar Maximum..

Lots of blogs to get entered. I am just finishing up the Community Area of the new site and will be importing the current blogs into the new format.

Some very exciting news is brewing for the solar enthusiast, so keep posted to the news and events section which will now be updated every few days..

Help Needed on Lunt Forum

The New Lunt Solar Forum is live..

We are looking for a few enthusiasatic helpers who are familiar with this type of forum to do moderating and help set up the catagories etc..

Please let us know if you can help out by sending an e-mail to sales@luntsolarsystems.com

Working with us on the Lunt Forum will entitle you to discounts on Lunt Products. We can also arrange to send new products to you for test and review.

Thanks in advance...

NEAF shirt spotted in Peru!!

I'll have to get Rikki to do a little write up about what it's like living in Peru.

Here is an image of Rikki with Jesus, the guy who drives her too and from "work" every day.

Is that a NEAF shirt that Jesus is wearing??

As some people know, Rikki lives in Peru. She runs the Lunt office from a small office in the town near where she lives. It must be nice to be chauffeured to and from work.

When I get into the office in the morning, I see the mouse cursor on her virtual terminal moving around. She uses an internet based program to chat with Jen in the office all day for free!! You know she's here all day, but you never see her...

I won't say that it hasn't been without it's small glitches, but I have to say that the virtual commuting really works even over thousands of miles to a developing country..

What else does Rikki do in Peru and how did we get this worked out?? I'll have to get her write up a little blog and send in some pics..

Stay tuned..

Limited Edition LS75F/HR Un-Obstructed

A HR LS75F Un-obstructed filter with matchable BF at <0.6Angstroms (single stack).

During the process of R&D I have been working with new coating technologies that are very low stress and very high finesse. As you know, these coatings will be made available in the new LS152T.

One of our recent projects was the manufacture of some un-obstructed larger 75mm Hydrogen-alpha etalons. My intention was to build one and keep it for myself.

Due to batch costs, it was just as costly to make one as it was to make a few :)

As luck would have it, we have been able to produce a couple of these etalons and I have decided to make maybe 5 available. These filters are not part of our normal production and when they are gone, they are gone, we will not take any orders for more. They are a limited edition signature series filter. There is the possibility of matching 2 for a single DS system.

A little about the etalons:

Internal aperture obstructions are used to maintain the parallelism of the high reflector plates typical to an etalon.
Removing the internal obstructions, or feet, requires that the etalon plates be manufactured to the highest specification for flatness possible. Generally better than 100th wave.
In order to prevent stress to the plates (bending) after the coating process, the coating has to be done in a system that can put down a hard, accurate, dielectric at very low heat. This process is often refered to as ion assisted deposition.

In order to decrease the bandwidth, we had to improve the high reflector dielectric properties. However, in general the trade off has been that plates flat enough to take advantage of the improved coating, were too costly to produce. (higher R needed better flatness).

The coatings that we are currently introducing have higher finesse and lower bandpass. While also providing higher contrast (noise to signal and all that). We are making the blacker, black, and the brighter, bright. Sort of like HD for solar viewing..

I will discuss more about the coatings in a future blog..

The specifications are as follows:

Type: Single Etalon Front Mount Filter
Size: 75mm Un-obstructed
Bandpass: <0.6
FSR: 11 Angstroms
Blocking Filter: Price includes B1200
Adapter Plate: Not Included (POR)
Price: US$3,985.00
Availability: Limited from Stock (check your local dealer or call us)

These are subject to prior sale and we will NOT take orders after they are gone.

Each filter will be signed and dated.

We have a few other fun things coming up, so you will have to check back here to hear about them first. (How about an unobstructed 150????) ;)~

One Thousand Dollar Giveaway :)

In the spirit of awards and the launch of our new website, Lunt Solar will be giving away a total of US$1,000.00 in gift cards to be used toward the purchase of any Lunt product at any authorized Lunt dealer worldwide..

Entries for this event should be received by December 31st 2009. All entries received after that will be included in January 2010. Award winners will be notified in early January.

How do you enter??

Simply submit; a series of images with related text, an editorial article, a "how to" article, educational article, etc.. Keep the submission relevant and original to anything Solar. It doesn't have to be observing related.

All submissions will be reviewed and prizes will be awarded to those that are interesting, fun, creative, and entertaining.

Submissions will be placed into our blog or on our website.

Please include return contact information in all submissions.

Submissions and questions should be sent to: sales@luntsolarsystems.com
Please use the sales e-mail until we have finished uploading the completed website and accounts this coming week....

Check back often for more info and updates.

First Week of November (Last Part)

As of November 1st we officially began to move into our new expanded facilities next door. Our landlord, Steve, has been nice enough to let us store our cases, shipping containers etc. over there for the last few months until the facilities were ready. The new facilities increased our square footage by about another 40%.

The expansion incudes a few more offices, a nice education/AV area with kitchen and restrooms, and in mid area a nice big fully climate controlled room for our upcoming coating facilities with large double doors to our current assembly area. The back of the area has been heated and cooled, but is currently used as a main storage area. During the buildout of our current area, we had the fore thought to put 800 Amps of 3 phase power in, so the new area has plenty of juice to keep us going.

I'll have to get some pictures up, but it's hard to believe that we first moved in to the current building in February of 2008. The building had a small kitchen, and a lobby. There were NO bathroom facilities. (We made friends with the neighbors very quickly ;). The first 2 Continuous Polishers were working in the kitchen area on very long extension cords. I had an electric heater on one wall and an air conditioner on the other, both fighting to keep the un-insulated room at +/-1 degree.

6 months later we were able to move out of the kitchen and populate the new building just in time for our open house..

14 months later we are still expanding and I am still working very hard to increase our capacity to meet the ever growing demand.

Outreach in Riverside, CA

I wanted to share my experience with this new gear.

I don't know what Andy does when he matches this scopes and filters up but I am just completely blown away by the views with the new LS60THa scope and my original LS50FHa filter. This set up starts to mimics views I had years back with a buddies older Coronado Solarmax 90 filter on a TV101 scope! I knew double stacking was the way to go but seeing it real time with this latest technology really reinforces it.

I got first sunlight Saturday morning and could see so much detail on a new emerging active region that day. The bright spot with detailed twisting was very easy to see and study. The orange peel was so intense that the sun's globe was starting to show the classic 3D quality of truly high end H-Alpha rigs. And, amazingly, the double stack even at 50mm aperture was still able to show the prominences extremely well even while showing all this surface detail. How can this be!!? Most smaller aperture double stack H-Alpha filters and scopes in the past just showed higher surface detail at the strong expense of easily seen edge detail. Not both at the same time. This little additional gift to the views is just more iceing on the solar cake.

Using the scope and filter set up at the large STEP Conference outreach here in Riverside for the last two days presented easily seen surface detail for every single student and teacher. Every single one. No guessing. There was never any......"well I see it sort of but I'm not sure". Even the younger children could view the orange peel, filaments and active regions clearly. Lots of smiles or "that's so cool!" or "that's really our sun? Are you kidding me?....awwwwesome!!"

I now have the ultimate solar outreach tool that can be use to share our star with many thousands of the public of all ages over the years. I have tools to do serious outreach all day long. Not just at night. For an outreach junkie like me this is true Nirvana.
I thank all of you guys involved at Lunt Solar Systems for bringing this company to market. You folks really are continuing the vision of bringing H-Alpha observing to the masses. All I can say is your service and products speak for themselves.

.....Thanks for these very kind words, we look forward to hearing about ongoing outreach from Riverside and in your area.....

Thanks again,
P. Agins
Riverside Astronomical Society
Outreach program

The NEW Website!!

The new Lunt Solar Website is almost finished!
........It is almost finished... right?..........

With DNS transfer scheduled for Wednesday, November 11th I am excited about finally starting on a website dedicated to everything Solar. With live streams in Ha and CaK, news and events, forums, galleries, and editorials provided by the users of solar equipment.

We would like to see Solar enthusiasts get involved. Jot down a few stories, ideas or experiences and submit them for the site. We will be featuring articles on past and upcoming events, your local outreach efforts, and a chance to share you knowledge of observing and imaging. And please include pictures!!

The new community area will be dedicated to everything solar it does NOT matter what brand of scope you use. I have been involved in the solar filter business since about 1998, I understand that Lunt is not the only manufacture of Solar equipment, the fact is we all share the same interests and should do what we can to promote the hobby of Solar to everyone. I am certainly proud of the equipment I helped produce before Lunt, and it is a result of that experience that I am able to push it's continued evolution..

So put pen to paper and submit "articles of interest" to editorial@luntsolarsystems.com

We also need to get the word out about the new website and the blogs (there are 11 of us in this area).

The blog will be attached to the new site once the site is live..

First Week of November (Part 1)

The first week of November has flown by. A week ago today we were getting ready for Holloween night, it'll be Thanksgiving before you know it!!.

Testing, new products, and website were the projects of the week.

The image at left is the New LS152T/PT. This is currently the largest dedicated telescope that we manufacture. This is a working prototype and was on display at PATS. It had been my intention to take it outside on the Sunday, but the mount that I was going to borrow was sold on Saturday. I did try the mount it was displayed on, but that was a drop waiting to happen.

The internal lens sets for the system are almost finished. The prototype lenses were "off the shelf" and weren't quite optimized for the system proviving only about a 70% sweetspot in the center of field. The production lenses have been designed to the optical system. They are also slightly larger than the prototype given more aperture to the beam.

The LS152 contains an unobstructed 60mm HR (high resolution) etalon. This is a new etalon design and provides for high signal to noise ratio which greatly darkens that background allowing for stunning contrast on edge details.

I have already had one person ask about the unobstructed 60mm, and before the questions are raised and the assumptions made in other forums, I will state that we will not be introducing the LS60F until Summer of 2010. Due to the very high demand for the other products, we will not be tooling this particular size at the expense of current production. Our LS60F production is currently limited to the LS152T, and takes the place of the production schedule for the LS200T.

The estimated US$ retail for this instrument is $7,495.00 (this does NOT include the CaK module). For those that have the LS200T on order you will be receiving the LS152T at no additional cost. If you purchased the CaK option for the LS200T you will also be receiving that at no additional cost. As you know, the LS200T was introduced at 5k. It was the intention to increase this price once the system was shipping and had good reviews. As I will explain in another post, the LS200T could never meet both the performance requirements that I had set for it, while also meeting the strict safety requirements. The trade offs were leading to unacceptable compromizes on both sides. Safety will always be of the highest priority to ANY solar product.

For those that choose to accept the exchange, I promise that you will be receiving a solar system that exceeds my expectaions for what the LS200T was going to do. By defualt the delays have allowed for the incorporation of a 60mm etalon instead of a 50mm. The new HR (high resolution) coatings will be incorporated standard, and the value of the package itself will provide a good return on investment should you ever choose to sell.

For those that cannot accept the exchange, we will refund any deposit in full.

Recent Trip to Mt Lemmon Sky Center

This image was recently e-mailed to me from my Landlord. He and a group from his church spent the day and part of the evening at the Mt Lemmon Sky Center.
For those that attended the Open House at Lunt Solar a year ago, you will remember the visit to 9,000 ft. It was about this time of year and although the weather was clear and sunny, the temperatures were very cold.
Shortly after the visit we donated a LS100T/PT to the facility in appreciation of their hosting the event and providing everyone with a look thru some of their large scopes. Everyone had a great time.

We chose the LS100T/PT specifically because of the high altitude. A large aperture scope in great skies without the issues of air pressure to the air spaced etalon.

I hadn't given much thought to the scope on Mt Lemmon until I received this picture. Steve and the group were wandering around the domes, when Steve recognized the name on the 100T. He'd never actually looked thru one of my larger scopes before and expressed his excitment at having the chance to look thru one of our systems "in the wild". He was very pleased with the view. Everyone in the group had a chance to view the active region of last week.

This scope was provided to allow the Center to provide visitors a chance to view the Sun. The Mt Lemmon Sky Center is open to the public, and often receives large groups of children and adults who are interested in learning more about astronomy as well as the nature of the mountain.

For more information on the Sky Center you can visit http://skycenter.arizona.edu/

The facilities were remodeled about a year ago and I have to say that they did a fantastic job. From large kitchen areas, to private bedrooms, and a first rate meeting/audio visual area.

We are hoping to visit the center at our next Solar event which is now tentatively planned for March 2010.

Pressure vs Doppler Shift (Part 3)

The diagram at left shows the system has been fully pressurized. This pressure is equivalent to about a 12,000ft altitude change.
The air inside the sealed chamber has been compressed due to the reduced volume. As a result the refractive index of the air has increased and caused the CWL of the etalon to move to the blue or high energy side of the Hydrogen wavelength.

Due to the fact that there is no tilt involved, the image field remains flat and very precise.

Traditional tilting allows the Doppler shifting across the field in a plane perpendicular to the axis of light. The user can see a change to the image that allows for the viewing of proms and then filaments. The optimum position is when the proms and surface are both fairly detailed. Overtilting will tighten the bandpass but will also produce a banding effect. The resolution under the band is higher, but at the expense of the entire field of view.

People often feel that the entire field should be as good as the area created under the band. If this were possible, the systems would be spec'd at a much lower bandpass. If a band occurs, the system has probably been over attenuated.

True Doppler Tuning allows for a shift into and away from the user. Adding a 3D component to the viewing experience.
While it has minimal effect on proms due to their being at the edge of the disk, it does have an effect on filaments and active regions.
While looking at a filament at the center of the Sun the user has the ability to Doppler shift from the base of the filament to the tip, following the filament thru it's structure toward you and away from you. Allowing for enhanced visual and imaging capability for the observer as well as a research tool for the avid hobbyist.
The tuning system provides an order of magnitude more precision to the tuning of the desired features.

We are working on designs to the LS100F and the LS100T/Na utilizing the same technology.
The LS100F will be remotely operated for those that have this filter mounted on a long FL scope and do not have 4ft long arms.
We are currently manufacturing the LS60T and the LS100T via this technology.
The LS60T is fully upgradeable to the new Pressure Tune System at any time. However, it does require a return to the factory.

End of Part 3

Pressure vs Doppler Shift (Part 2)

The diagram shown at left indicates that the air pressure inside the sealed chamber has been increased. At this point the CWL of the bandpass is at 656.28nm. At this position we are looking at the Hydrogen-alpha line and the energy associated with that wavelength.

The sealing of the cavity is done via the collimating and refocus lens so that the etalon itself is isolated from differential pressure.
The piston applies from zero to a pressure that is equivalent to taking an etalon from -500ft to +12,000ft above sea level.
This has the added benefit of making the etalon system altitude insensitive.

In addition the etalon can be used from -50 to +200 degrees Celsius due to the fact that the tuning can compensate for the very small changes that heat would have on the "feet" of the etalon.

I have gone into great detail in prior posts regarding the compromises of tilting internal to a telescope. Only very small adjustments to the tilt of an etalon can be done otherwise the etalon system will begin to suffer from the off axis rays of the re-collimated beam.
People have noted that in internal tilt systems the CWL is very sensitive to even small adjustments of the tilt wheel.
By removing the need for tilt we have placed the etalon in the most optimized position possible.
We install a very accurately tuned etalon. This etalon is tuned to the red side of the CWL. Given that it is already tuned to the red, the user has the ability to shift the tune of the CWL to the Hydrogen-alpha line and then Doppler tune to the blue or back thru to the red.

Due to the fact that there is no tilt involved, the image field remains flat and very precise.

End of Part 2

Pressure vs Doppler Shift (Part 1)

Lunt Solar Systems recently introduced the new Pressure Tune system, or Doppler True Tuning system.

The image at left shows the basic outline of this system. The internal etalon is at ambient pressure. The tuning of the etalon is slightly low, putting the Center Wavelength (CWL) at the red wing of the Hydrogen line. This provides a view of less energetic features in the Chromosphere.

How does it work and what does it do?

The system works because the etalons used in the current Lunt designs are air spaced. These air spaced etalons have been typically tuned to the Hydrogen-alpha line via several mechanisms.

The first is the spacing of the air gap between the high reflective surfaces of the ultra flat plates. By changing the spacing, you change the CWL. The distance of this spacing is generally held constant because the refractive index of the medium between the plates (air) is relatively stable at ~1.
The center wavelength can be manipulated from there by slight tilting of the etalon. This changes the angle of the light at the interface of the high reflector/air layer, having the effect of moving the center wavelength toward the blue.

Slight changes in barometric pressure and/or a change in altitude will effect the CWL due to the change in refractive index of the spacer layer.
These changes can be compensated for by additional tilting provided that the etalon is tuned to accomodate those changes.
Taking an etalon that was tuned at 100ft to 10,000ft would certainly not be within that range.

In the past I have manufactured sealed etalon systems for space flight.
These etalon systems were designed to work in a sealed vacuum. As a result they were manufactured as very highly tuned etalons. By placing them under vacuum, the tuning lowered . Tuning was done to ensure that at full vacuum the etalon was on band.
Additional fine tuning from there was done via heat due to the fact that the vacuum could not be adjusted.

Our technology utilizes air pressure and not vacuum.

End of part 1

Lunt Solar and our new Website

On November 12th Lunt Solar Systems will be taking it's new website live.

I know that most of you are thinking that it is about time. I couldn't agree with you more.

The new launch will coincide with another very exciting announcement. As a result, Lunt Solar and it's products will be recieving some significant media attention. At the moment this other announcement has to be kept under wraps, but I assure you, it will be worth the visit.

The new website will be far more of a monthly magazine with focus on Solar events and activities. We are introducing an interactive community area and are looking forward to having editorials and blogs from customers and solar enthusiasts. We certainly hope that you will check back often and will participate.
Our goal in 2010 will be to introduce and develop an educational and learning source that will provide resources to all ages for everything Solar.

We are just finishing up our Live Solar feed in both Hydrogen-alpha and CaK, and although we anticipate being able to begin the live feed on Monday, November 2nd, we will bide our time and wait for the new site.

In addition to the above, Lunt Solar is going digital. We will be teaching ourselves the imaging process. I will be blogging our successes and failures, and I hope that very soon we can begin to provide a diary of images of the Sun's growing activity toward Solar Maximum. (we may need just a little help along the way).

Soooo, put your thinking caps on and type a few paragraphs for the new blogs. We would be interested in upcoming events, outreach activities, and anything solar related..

We also need you images for our upcoming new gallery. Please submit your images to blog@luntsolarsystems.com. Include a brief description of what equipment was used and how, where it was taken, and the name of the person to thank. Images of people looking thru and using solar equipment are also welcome.

More to come..