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Old 18-10-2012, 05:43 PM
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tilbrook@rbe.ne (Justin Tilbrook)
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Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Penwortham
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Orion cooler box test.

Hi,
Finally had a few nights suitable for more testing of the Orion cooler box.
First the images.
They were taken on two nights, 17/10 and 18/10 both single 8 minute subs at ISO 800, I would have preferred to do it on one night but it was getting too cold, dipping below 10 Celsius outside temp.
The image marked cooled was 17/10, running at an average temp zero Celsius, with the orion cooler.
The image marked no cooling was 18/10, ambient temp 14 Celsius.
As you can see the cooler was doing the job.
The scope pics, show how I balanced out the cooler, with the finder and auto guider mounted directly opposite the focuser. This is not neutral balance, it's biased toward the cooler but it has certainly fixed the balance problem. Of course more weight was required on the R.A. arm , just over 2 kgs and I needed to move the OTA back in the cradle to centre the balance.
You can see from the PHD graph that it was running quite well.
The cooler.
There is no way it will run up to 24C below ambient as stated on Orions web site!
It may do so if there was no camera in it, the best I could do was 15c below ambient. I’ve been checking out other reviews and from what I can see this is the norm. While 15c is useful, it's not what I was expecting.
Ease of use.
Well no, it's not easy to use!
It's cumbersome, a pain to feed the cables through and the 4 plastic screws that hold it together are just a dumb idea. Why didn't they use a hinge and locking clasp!!
So while it does the job, it doesn't live up to the sales blurb and could use some serious redesigning.
You may ask, why the hell did you buy it!
Well I'm not at the stage where I want a real CCD and I don't want to modify my canon 1100D, also sick of building my own stuff and wanted off the shelf.
Cheers,
Justin.
Attached Thumbnails
Click for full-size image (M77cooled.jpg)
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Click for full-size image (M77notcooled.jpg)
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Click for full-size image (finderguider.jpg)
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Click for full-size image (coolertest.jpg)
173.5 KB84 views
Click for full-size image (cooler2.jpg)
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