Hi there, and welcome to Lighting-Gallery!

First and foremost, I'd like to ask if you know the make of your lamp, and whether or not it is a recent vs. NOS manufacture.

I've had weird discoloration with 90s Philips MH lamp after a first run-up before, but typically I've run the lamp for about five hours and it all cleared up.

Another thing I noticed is that older Sylvania lamps (particularly Mercury Vapor) tend to form white deposits (from what I presume is air/impurities). This too could have affected your particular Metal Halide make, if it is indeed Sylvania and an older one at that. (Saying this as they were likely made on the same machinery with similar processes).

Since your cap and ballast are fine, I'd probably think the lamp suffered some kind of premature failure? Maybe defective from the factory even? I would doubt that running this lamp for a measly 10min on a CCFL power supply would do much... though of course I could be wrong.

Wishing you all the best, and welcome to the club! 

-Maxim

Sure you did not misspell the ballast ANSI code? For 400W MH a staple American ballast is M59, not H59. Though I may be not very proficient in American lamp gear, may be some colleagues will correct.

As for aging I meant an usual ballast prescribed for this lamp. If everything else is correct, and the lamp is just upset by running for some time with glow discharge, hopefully  it will restore its chemical balance and after a few cycles will start and run-up normally. If not I would suspect the lamp was already defective from the beginning and it was not running on CCFL inverter that damaged it.

I second that.! Well done Molly, a comment has been left.

@Molly, You captured the Corona in shot as well. Nice!

Today, I got some leds and a hidden lamp from a battery lantern. Since here the Shopkeepers don't understand properly, even after their stock supposedly ran out, talking a bit more will get them to find some items.

I found the motherlode of cheap HPL-N Comfort 50 and 125 or 150ws, some SDW-ts (Not for sale in the USA?! Like... Why so specific?) and all the 150w tubular HPS and halide lamps you can wish for. At another scrapyard meets thrift shop.

I'm currently polling if there's any interest in my own country - the shopkeeper said that he already got rid of most of it because people only buy LED stuff so i am prepared to put in some effort to just buy a moving box full and have people pick them up at my place -  but i'm willing to send one box to the USA if there is any interest in them, for further distribution to the rest of people overseas who may be interested.

Pictures will follow after i'm done with the people who can pick them up here, so i don't lead anyone on

I went to Newport, Vermont to see the eclipse, It was quite packed with thousands of people. I made a sequence of my photos here.

The Corona! Yep, based on your description @LandryB, I saw that too. I didn't know what it was at first though, and assumed it was just light
reflecting off air particles or something. 
I have a lot to learn. lol... but it looked very awesome. Saw that with my bare eyes as well, no sunglasses required.

I drove up to Eustis, Maine to see it.  We has 3 minutes, 2 seconds of totality.  The sky was clear.  It was pretty awesome.  The last minute before totality I could see the sunlight getting dimmer & dimmer.  I could see shadow bands moving along the snow & the street.  During totality all the streetlights came on.  The light level was like twilight but the coloration of the sky was different, dark blue sky above gradually transitioning to pale yellow-orange near the horizon all around us.  The corona around the sun looked like a very pale lavendar halo around the eclipsed sun.

Are you sure you are using a proper ballast with a right open circuit voltage (metal halide vs mercury vs sodium) and wire it in a proper way, according to the schematics attached to the ballast?  A capacitor in an American syle ballast may be generally connected across the primary (a compensating capacitor in HX circuit) or in series with the lamp (CWA). Are you connecting a proper tap at a primary?

What arrangement are you using to measure the power? 120W certainly does not look right. Typically you see lamp runs up to almost full power (400W + ballast losses = almost 500W) before shutting off if it cycles.


Running an arc lamp on a CCFL inverter definitely should not kill it in 10 minutes, 5 milliamps current is too low and electrodes are quite robust, though that kind of idiocy certainly needs to be eradicated... In theory, that can release some free halogen impurities in the burner to temporary cause starting / running problems with the lamp, but I believe it will recover after aging for a few hours on a right ballast.

This is a CWA H-59 ballast that is wired properly according to the schematic on the label. The capacitor is in series with the lamp. It has many voltage taps, and I am using the orange 120v wire and feeding it 120v.

I am measuring the wattage with a cheap plug-in wattmeter that is of course on the primary side of the ballast. This means that the 120w power measurement is actually including the ballast losses.

What kind of ballast is the "right ballast" for aging? I totally agree that I was an idiot, I could've at least googled it before running it on a CCFL driver. Thanks for your help!