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Old 03-05-2015, 07:34 PM
jase (Jason)
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Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Melbourne, Victoria
Posts: 3,916
I've had the opportunity to use both ccd's in the Apogee flavour. First an Alta F29050 (KAI-29050) and an Aspen CG16070 (KAI-16070). I can state I never saw transfer efficiency problems with either camera. I had them attached to a 16" ASA I've installed at SSO so similar set up to you Florent.

The F29050 with its 20k wells was a little disappointing and I found it challenging to use with a fast scope. I ended up taking many 240s exposures to maintain star colours which sounds practical however a 30mp camera result in a raw fits file size of 55Mb, calibrated ~70Mb, then multiply that by 16 or 24 sub exposures and you soon find stacking files an arduous task for a moderately sized image processing system.

The F29050 camera electronics were not up to standard (same banding I saw when I upgraded my Apogee U16M to F16M), with the camera under warranty and Andor (who took over Apogee) no longer supporting the F29050 in their product line, I selected the Aspen CG16070 as the replacement. The CG16070 so far has been a fantastically performing camera. 44k wells, easier to use with fast scopes and a good match in terms of arcsec/pixel. Unfortunately as Murphy would have it, the CG16070 developed an intermittent digitization error and is currently with Andor for investigation. I'm looking forward to getting the CG16070 camera back but in the mean time I'm using a loan Alta F16000 from Andor. I didn't think much of the KAI-16000 ccd but its performing reasonably well. Its actually not too different from the KAI-16070 but a smaller well size (32k versus 44k of 16070).

Attached is a single 240s clear filtered sub (calibrated) showing a blown out M42 (ddp stretched) taken with the CG16070 through the 16" ASA. 50% reduced.

If you go with the KAI-16070, I doubt you'll be disappointed.
Attached Thumbnails
Click for full-size image (M42-Clear-PA000-W-I240-BIN1-LT233222-Scaled.jpg)
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