Viewing with Calcium K Telescopes

The Lunt Calcium K Module

To view the Sun via Calcium K with your Lunt Universal Telescope, remove the H-alpha module and blocking filter, then attach a Lunt Calcium K Module to the focuser.

Having the ability to study the Calcium K and the Hydrogen-alpha lines provides important insights into the structure, strength, and depth of these active regions. Lunt Solar Systems Calcium K modules can be used with most standard night time refractors, or with Lunt’s new Universal Telescopes in their nighttime configuration!

While most people can visually see the violet color of the wavelength, many cannot resolve the contrast due to yellowing of the cornea that comes naturally with age. People who have had cataract surgery are often able to see considerable detail. But due to the difficulty many people have seeing this wavelength, the Ca-K line is typically studied via the use of cameras, which are able to provide stunning details.

Calcium K viewing was highly specialized several years ago, but these days is accessible to people with smaller telescopes including Lunt Universal scopes.

Industry-Leading Quality and Safety

High Safety Standards

At Lunt Solar safety is our top priority. When Lunt Solar started making solar telescopes and filters, the subject of eye safety was at the forefront of our design. Our designs were approved by a senior ophthalmologist professor at a leading university of ophthalmology in Canada. A safety criterion was determined for both UV and IR transmission. This criterion basically set the bar at less than 1×10-5 (T) for any hazardous radiation.

Several standalone filters in Lunt products meet this criterion as a single unit. However, Lunt sets double and sometime triple standards for this requirement so that in the unlikely event one filter fails, the user will still be fully protected.

Because of the addition of multiple filters and safety features, a person simply standing in the sunlight will receive more ambient UV and IR radiation to the eye than when they are looking through one of our solar telescopes.

Lens Coating:

Lunt purchases our raw etalon glass materials from an ISO-qualified company on the East Coast of the United States. We grind, edge, bevel, and polish all the glass needed for the etalon and filter systems in-house in Tucson, AZ. Some coatings are outsourced to a facility that maintains a coating specific to our requirements.

Our coating facility has the required ability to produce anti-reflective coating at less than 0.1% reflectivity (R) (typically in the 0.06%R range). They also hold the high reflector coatings to better than +/-1%. The ability to control the coating processes to such high accuracy has allowed us to make precision modifications to the coating formulas, which have proven to increase contrast through the reduction of background noise.

Quality Assurance:

Each coating batch is provided with full scans of the coating applied and is certified to meet any and all safety requirements. Some of our precision-coated filters are provided to us from a US military-qualified company who provides full military certifications with every filter.

All Lunt Solar products are 100% safe when used as directed and are shipped from the factory free of any damage or defects. If a Lunt instrument is ever dropped or damaged, it should be returned to the factory for testing and re-certification.

Due to different optical arrangements in each design, a Lunt solar product should never be mixed and matched with components made by other companies.

One of the most important questions to ask when looking at a Solar Telescope is whether or not is has taken your safety into the highest consideration.

Does the system have redundant safety features to protect you if something should fail?

Does the system come with a Blocking Filter that contains additional safety features?