| The Lunt LS60THa 60mm solar refractor represents an economical new approach to serious high resolution Hydrogen-alpha solar viewing. The Lunt 60mm solar refractor shows you much more of the living Sun than ordinary glass or Mylar white light solar filters that show only sunspots. With the Lunt LS60THa you see the violent ever-changing tapestry of multiple prominences leaping off the edges of the solar disk and the explosive upheavals of flares and filaments on the face of the Sun. All of this is visible in addition to sunspots in exquisite detail. Best of all, its larger 60mm aperture shows you 50% more solar detail than the competitive 40mm solar refractor.
The Lunt LS60THa consists of a 500mm focal length 60mm aperture f/8.33 refractor with an integrated Hydrogen-alpha solar filter. The two-part filter uses an internal etalon behind the objective lens and a 6mm blocking filter built into the standard equipment 1.25" star diagonal. There is also an infrared reflecting window (Energy Reflecting Filter or ERF) early in the optical path to remove unwanted heat from the system. A tuning mechanism built into the system lets you center the passband precisely on the H-alpha line for maximum contrast, as well as perform off-band observations of Doppler-shifted disk features to determine whether they are moving towards you or away from you.
The scope’s singlet objective lens is fully multicoated. It is not necessary to use an achromatic doublet in a small solar scope to correct for chromatic aberration in the violet end of the visible spectrum. Solar scopes are designed to observe only a single wavelength of red light at the opposite end of the spectrum. Why pay for two lenses to cure a problem that a solar scope is incapable of showing you in the first place? In addition, the front singlet lens design reduces the stray-light of a two-lens achromat by half. With the matched collimation lens set built into the scope, it also fully corrects for on-axis coma, astigmatism, and de-centering aberrations and provides a spherically corrected flat-field image.
The filter has a <0.75 Ångstrom passband, centered on the 6562.8 Ångstrom H-alpha line. The sub-Ångstrom passband width gives you balanced views of feathery prominences and low-contrast surface detail alike. The filter is thermally stable, so there is no drifting off the H-alpha line as the filter heats up during use. The 6mm clear aperture of the blocking filter portion of the H-alpha system (which is built into the star diagonal housing) is ideally matched to the focal length of the telescope to give you an approximately 4.5mm diameter image of the full disk of the Sun at prime focus.
The Lunt LS60THa uses a dual-speed Crayford focuser with a 10:1 reduction ratio for precision focusing on the smallest of solar details. Large ribbed focusing knobs make it easy for you to reach a precise focus, even if you are observing in the dead of winter while wearing gloves or mittens.
You can use virtually any 1.25" eyepieces with the 60mm Lunt solar refractor. A typical 20mm 1.25" Plössl will give you a magnification of 25x and a little over a 2° field of view compared with the 0.5° diameter disk of the Sun. A 15mm Plössl will give you 33.3x and about a 1.5° field, giving you plenty of dark sky background around the solar disk to show off the prominences.
The Lunt LS60THa comes with a clamshell-type mounting ring with 1/4"-20 thread holes that will let you mount the scope directly on a photo tripod for a quick peek at the Sun. You can also mount the clamshell ring on a dovetail plate and install it on an altazimuth mount with slow motion controls for easier extended observing and tracking of the Sun. A foam-lined hard case is standard equipment for transporting and storing your Lunt scope.
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