"ICSTARS owners, Vic & Jen Winter, are prominent figures in many areas of amateur astronomy. They are owners of Astronomical Tours, a company specializing in travel specifically for astronomers, operate the popular astronomy website, www.ICSTARS.com, as well as former editors of the national amateur astronomy newsletter, The Reflector. The two direct the Southern Skies Star Party in Bolivia and are founders of the Not-for-Profit StarGarden Foundation. Vic Winter is a JPL NASA Solar System Ambassador and prestigious first awardee of the Astronomical League's Solar Observer Certificate number one, and was the only holder of that award for 10 years. Vic has been observing and photographing the sun in high-resolution hydrogen alpha for decades and has compiled years of extensive filtergram studies.

Right: Del Woods and to the right is Vic Winters 13 Feb 2006 (150,648 bytes).

DayStar owner, Del Woods first began manufacturing narrow-bandpass hydrogen-alpha solar filters over 37 years ago. Those precision filters have been used in amateur, university and flown space applications around the world at hydrogen-alpha and calcium K-line wavelengths. Though it was once the foremost solar filter manufacturer in the world, DayStar's production had all but ended in recent years because of health concerns of owner Del Woods.

Under new management and armed with the support and expertise of Mr. Woods, ICSTARS will breath life back into the DayStar filter line. With some additional modernizations and applications, the new DayStar will continue to support existing owners and introduce intermediate and advanced astronomers to the benefits of large aperture, tuned sub-angstrom solar observing.

The DayStar facility is being relocated to the ICSTARS Ranch in Missouri, where first priority for management will be to service needs of existing DayStar clients. A small number of new filters will be produced for demonstration and fulfillment of back-orders in March of 2006. New filter orders would be ready for delivery as early as May - 2006.

DayStar hydrogen-alpha and Calcium K-line filters are rear-mounted etalon-based filtration systems, which allows for maximum resolution and detail with telescopes of any aperture, limited only by the optical quality of the telescope and Dawes's limit, the empirical resolution limit set by atmospheric seeing.

Once filters are in production, DayStar will present updates to the line, allowing more convenient applications and precision filter operation for a broad range of solar observers.

We understand Del Woods will be teaching the new owners his tricks of the trade, and will stay on in some consulting capacity at least for the near future.

It is too early to tell what changes will be made to the product line, if any. But among the policy changes we have observed is the reduction in the new DayStar filter warranty from the previous ten years, to five. So any new filters sold bearing the DayStar trademark from 2006 on will be covered for five years.

Company Seven will continue our work as the most experienced and long lived remaining DayStar distributor while we will pay close attention to the qualities and changes that are likely to come under the new ownership. We are optimistic that the enthusiastic and good hearted people who are going to give it a go will breathe new life into the solar observing community.

In his absence Company Seven will not accept new orders for DayStar filters. We will however continue to provide technical support and complete repair and maintenance services in or out of warranty for any DayStar product sold by Company Seven. Company Seven will as a courtesy to Del Woods offer support and repair of DayStar products no sold by Company Seven on a moderate fee basis ONLY until DayStar can open for business again sometime in the future.

Cards or other condolences for Del and his family may be sent to Company Seven, and we in turn will send them on to the family.