Hi Everyone!

After NEAIC/NEAF and the excellent talks/presentations there, I caught the itch to acquire solar gear. After doing a ton of reading online, I wanted to directly ask people with more experience about solar equipment. My main question is which of the following combinations for solar would yield the best results overall in this 100mm class? Is there a recommended price to performance combination (DS internal vs DS Front + internal or DS internal vs Single Stack Front)? Am I going to notice a difference between a single stack front etalon vs a double stack internal etalon vs a front + internal double stack?

  • LS100MT Premium Bundle ($5400) (Double stack internal) (Assuming miscellaneous costs for stuff like the Ha filters but no other major purchases to rely on)

  • LS100MT Enhanced Bundle + LS100FHa ($4300 + $4000) (1 Front, 1 Internal)

  • LS100FHa + Blocking Diagonal ($4000 + $700) (Single stack new Etalons are <0.45A)

Some context:

  • I have a SVX102T I’m ordering soonTM. I know for a fact that this is going to be an excellent night time scope and that I can likely put the LS100FHa on as a single stack. The tradeoffs are I don’t get an extra scope and lose out on double stacking until I get another internal etalon scope but I save a ton of money.

  • I’d like to not drop a ton of money for a one trick pony (partially ruling out the Heliostar 100 but it had some incredible views). Hence a LS100MT night and day set up is favorable since I can put the scope to work at night as well (working with the SVX or my Esprit).

  • I’m not looking for a scope smaller or larger than 100mm.

  • I’d like to not exceed the price of the front + internal combo. As a result, double front etalons are probably not financially feasible for this gear cycle.

  • I am aware that Lunt has new etalons and that a lot of the discussion about it will be kind of speculative since there aren’t that many or if any out in the wild at all.

I was lucky enough to be at NEAF and got to look through the variety of scopes available there. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a direct comparison between a LS100MT and a Heliostar 100. From what I saw, the Heliostar 100 was extremely impressive to me visually. However, with the new Lunt Etalons coming out, I was wondering if they might matchup/do better now.

Thanks for reading, I look forward to any responses! Clear skies!

- Joel

P.S. If anyone knows about how the LS100MT performs at night on APS-C I would love to hear about that! Most of the nighttime information I read about is that it’s a FPL 53 triplet but raw frames tell the real story.

P.P.S. Not relevant to purchasing but is triple stacking etalons a thing?