Reviews

Build Quality

When lifting this unit you can feel the build quality by its weight and feel. The scope is superbly made from the anodising of the aluminium to the actual optics. One minor thing though is the plastic locking screw that holds in the eyepieces. This looks and is inconsistent to the rest of the build quality. It effectively means that you cannot hold a Digital SLR on the scope. The plastic just cannot hold that sort of weight. All up though this scope has the best qualities about it. Also the rubber lining to the helical focusor is not very good. The rubber broke within a year or so of purchase and while it does not affect performance of the focusor, it is just one of those little things that need to be looked at by Meade.

Solarmax 60
I bought the Solarmax 60 in August of 2007. The model I chose was the 0.5 angstrom model with one external etalon and one internal. It comes with a Cemax 25mm eyepiece, clamshell mounting, solar ranger and hard carry case. It was to upgrade from the double stacked PST that I owned prior. The telescope has not disappointed as being a step up from the PST. At the time te Australian dollar was quite low and this affected the price significantly. In recent years the dollar has been quite high and this has meant that these type of telescopes are much more affordable and I think this is really the entrance level telescope for imaging.
Build Quality When lifting this unit you can feel the build quality by its weight and feel. The scope is superbly made from the anodising of the aluminium to the actual optics. One minor thing though is the plastic locking screw that holds in the eyepieces. This looks and is inconsistent to the rest of the build quality. It effectively means that you cannot hold a Digital SLR on the scope. The plastic just cannot hold that sort of weight. All up though this scope has the best qualities about it. Also the rubber lining to the helical focusor is not very good. The rubber broke within a year or so of purchase and while it does not affect performance of the focusor, it is just one of those little things that need to be looked at by Meade.
Use This scope is a huge step up from the PST model. The extra diameter affords the scope with so much more resolution, which translates into more detail. On the solar surface you can often see orange peeling and the granulation of the Ha surface even with a 25mm eyepiece. All active regions no matteer how small they are just stand out from the surface details. Plage is similarly very bright and filaments show great contrast and sharp definition. Sunspots are like inky spots. And; the prominences show loads more detail and yet still quite bright. Using the etalon can increase detail for one type of detail and reduce those for others depending on which way the blue shifting goes. Finding the careful balance of what shows the right amount of detail can be tricky, but ultimately rewarding. For imaging this unit has it's pro's and con's. The detail that can be obtained when imaging at around 2000mm is superb. Magnetic field lines on active regions are well contrasted against the solar surface. The inner and outer regions of sunspots have clear definition and prominences are well defined with a bandwidth change. The aperture affords a much sharper looking image on these particular points of interest. The scope does suffer from hot spots when imaging and this can present minor problems for mosaic work. I found several work arounds to control the issue, but overall you would need to concentrate on getting the etalon setting correct to capture the data with even illumination. Final Comments This is a fine scope for both observing and imaging. Minor issues affect imaging, but overall the telescope performs well. I have used it several times for public outreach and many times for imaging and it has performed flawlessly. It has been a great investment and I would seriously consider buying another Coronado instrument should I decide to upgrade.

		EARTH & COSMOS

Solarmax 60