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Old 28-07-2020, 07:21 PM
AnakChan (Sean)
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AnakChan is offline
 
Join Date: Sep 2014
Location: Perth
Posts: 371
ASI6200MM/MC impressions

Hi all,

I've been doing OSC for the past 5 years (with a cooled mirrorless CentralDS A7S, so it's not really a proper dedicated astro camera) and beginning of this year I picked up my first dedicated mono, the ASI6200MM rig with matching EFW2, ZWO 2" LRGBNB filters, OAG, ASI174MM Mini & ASIAir Pro.

It took a few months to put everything together with custom adapters (thanks to Joshua Bunn) and finally got proper first light last week.

Moving from the cooled A7S mirrorless, I found acquisition on a dedicated astro camera to be a PITA cos on the A7S where I could switch to a really high ISO to frame, I could zoom to focus in real time (rather than 1-2 sec subs).

Acquisition on the A7S was also simpler for me since the camera was the computer. However the dedicated astro camera, control is external on some PC (or in my case, the ASIAir Pro).

Having said that though, the dedicated astro rig however provided a much greater control - temperature, dithering between shots, etc.

And finally the benefit of the ASI6200MM is that it produced really really clean outputs - darks, lights, etc. Whilst with the A7S acquisition was simple, processing was tedious. However with the ASI6200MM, acquisition was tedious, but processing to produce masters were buttery.

I've not had such clean signals ever, nice tight stars.

Using the ASIAir Pro, I did not experience any driver issues. I don't have a NUC/miniPC therefore I can't comment on 3rd party s/w compatibility. However I have tested N.I.N.A v1.10 with the camera and EFW2, and didn't encounter any issues.

The following M16 was taken in SHO with a total integration of 13.67 hrs (4x Ha in 600sec subs, 4.67x Oiii in 300sec subs, 5x Sii in 600sec subs). The OTA is the Takahashi µ250CRS.

I preordered the ASI6200MM in Dec '19, as I felt the QHY600 was too expensive, even though they had at the Pro version at the Photographer's price. Seeing some of the inconsistent driver issues with the QHY600, I'm kinda glad I stuck to ZWO. I'd guess in time though QHY would fix their driver issues.
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