Coronado Maxscope 40

The idea of the club (Delmarva Stargazers) purchasing a hydrogen alpha solar scope for public events was tabled at the March (2003) meeting. It was decided that the commercial H-alpha scope was not needed because the club already had similar capability with Dave Groski's Prominence scope. When I attended the Oregon star party last August one of the vendors had a Coronado H-alpha scope setup for viewing on a simple altaz tripod mount. I was impressed with the ease of use compared to the prominence scope, which requires a motorized equatorial mount and close polar alignment. I started researching the H-alpha product offerings with the intention of gathering info to sway the club to make the purchase. I knew the prices of H-alpha gear were high and I found some equipment ranging past the $5000 mark. I also found a pair of small dedicated solar scopes made by Coronado. The Coronado Maxscope40 sells for about $1700 and the Maxscope60 for about $3200. The favorable reviews and comments on these scopes along with the relatively reasonable price convinced me to purchase a Maxscope40 for myself.

People that know me might find it out of character for me to buy a commercial scope. I have always found that building my scopes is half the fun. I have to give credit to the people at Coronado for producing a unique, compact, easy to use product. Plus I still got a little ATM work building the mount.



I knew I could build an altaz mount for far less than the $500+ that Televue gets for their Gibraltar/Tele-pod combo I had seen in Oregon. I already had a custom tripod that I made for my binocular mount. It now gets double duty serving as the base for my H-alpha setup. The Maxscope40 comes with a finder ring type mount that allows you to piggyback on another scope. For a tripod setup I didn't need the adjustable rings but I did need side bearings so I decided to start over from scratch.



Using this approach I was able to make a compact mount that would include an integrated sunfinder pointing aid. This simple aid uses the shadow of a pin projected on a white card to put the sun in the eyepiece even at higher power. The new assembly still fits in the original case supplied with the scope by just removing the side bearings.

Using the scope is a breeze. Setup time is under five minutes. The Maxscope40 comes with a 25 mm CEMAX eyepiece made by Coronado. This setup allows the entire solar disk to fit in the field of view. I have found with this eyepiece that you have to keep you eye centered or the image blacks out, also its not quite enough magnification to bring out the detail. After trying some of my limited collection of eyepieces I have found my 7 mm Nagler to work the best (everything looks better thru a Nagler, right!). The higher mag shows more detail and the Nagler doesn't black out but the solar disk doesn't fit in the field so you have to 'drive' the scope to see it all.

Well is the little scope worth the price tag? I think so if it gets used. I plan to make the scope available to club members for public events and plan to set it up at public events in my area.


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