Maxim DL Q's

[whzzz28]

Hi all,

Will be purchasing Maxim DL as soon as paycheck goes in for use with my new QHY9.

Been reading the manual to get an idea of how it works, but i have a few questions.

1) Is there any options under Autosave to control the CCD shutter? The QHY9 has an option to turn the shutter off (keep it closed) in nebulosity, and it sounds like a great way to take some Bias/darks.
I plan on making a library, so darks/bias in the field won't be a huge thing, but it would still be handy to know if it can be turned off somewhere. I believe there is an option in ASCOM to do so, but i am not sure if this can be done via autosave (slot 1 = turn off shutter, take 10x photos. Slot 2 = turn on shutter, take 10x photos) etc.

2) Autosave allows you to enter a repeat number for each slot (so 10x R, 11x B, 12x G, as an example). How does Maxim take these shots?
Does it do one red (slot 1), then change filter and do slot 2 (blue) etc, and repeats the slot list, or does it do 10x red (slot 1) photos, then moves the filter and does 11x Blue (slot 2) photos?
I have heard that you should do 1x of each color rather than doing each color in a batch. Is this true? If so, is there anything i need to setup in Maxim DL to do this?

3) Is there a limit to slots? Maybe i should do small batches of each color, so 3x red then 3x blue then 3x green (slot 1, 2 and 3 respectivley) and then slot 4 is 3x red again?

4) Is maxpoint worth it? I do have a lot of trouble getting reliable goto with my setup. I am guessing that i am doing something wrong with Stellarium calibration as rarely do i ever get the item i am after in my FOV.

Thanks.

[thefrogulox]

Hi Nathan

I use Maxim with my QHY9.

Answers as follows:

1) In the camera control box (Autosave), you can select what type of image you are taking (ie light, dark flat or bias). If you select dark or bias, it will keep the shutter on the QHY9 closed.

2) In Autosave you can select it to "Group by Slot". This means if you are setup to do 10 x R, 10 x G, 10 x B it will take 10 shots using the R filter, then 10 in G and 10 in Blue. The default setting cycles through them (1 R then 1 G then 1 B) until it has done 10 in each.
I leave it at the default setting. It gives you more to work with in terms of data if your imaging is interrupted for some reason.

3) I don't think there is a limit. There is rarely enough imaging time in 1 night to get anywhere a limit in any case.

4) No experience with maxpoint.

Hope this helps.

Al

[whzzz28]

Great Al,
That answers all but one of my question, much appreciated.

I know a lot of people use plate solving (pinpoint) for precision, which begs the question if Maxpoint is worth the extra $100 or not?

[Tandum]

Maxim plate solves out of the box just fine so long as it's setup ok.

Maxpoint is to Maxim as TPoint is to The Sky. Software wise it goes between everything and the mount. You do a maxpoint cal run and it drives the scope and camera around taking pics and plate solving them which builds a map of alignment errors and then corrects those errors when finished, like tpoint does. I don't need it here but I guess if you had a very long FL setup, like 3meters, or a really crap mount, then maybe.

Also, don't rely on the QHY9 shutter to take dark/bias shots. I've found IR can come through a plastic nose cap and through the plastic shutter on the QHY9. If you do darks on the bench put alfoil over the nose / under the cap or on a scope, put the cap on the scope for higher quality cal files.