View Single Post
  #66  
Old 16-05-2016, 10:15 AM
rmuhlack's Avatar
rmuhlack (Richard)
Professional Nerd

rmuhlack is offline
 
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Strathalbyn, SA
Posts: 916
The more I look into it, the more i think that CMOS lucky deep sky imaging is where the future innovation will lie. The ability to capture high resolution images with no guiding and far less demanding mount requirements will be a real game changer. All this is possible (as Ray has already explained) because of ultra low read noise. Furthermore, if the absolute QE is also high then there isn't even a compromise in sensitivity (see Ray's thread on sensitivity here for more detail). Data storage requirements are a magnitude larger as mentioned here already but fortunately storage is cheap (~$50 per TB), especially compared with a mount upgrade.

One thing I have been wondering about though is automation. Currently I'm using SGPro for automation and image acquisition with my SBIG ST8 and ST10, but this wont work directly for video capture. Does this mean that we will be (at least in the short term) sacrificing some automation convenience in favour of increased resolution...?

A compromise I have thought of is that one could use a more traditional capture camera on a guide scope (or maybe an ONAG). A sequence could be queued up in SGPro with the "guide" scope, giving the convenience of automated pointing and plate solving, meridian flips etc. In parallel, a capture sequence is setup in Firecapture to collect the higher frame rate video. Ideally we will see new software that will be able to combine these activities (eg plate solving and auto meridian flips in Firecapture...), but in the short term this might suffice...?
Reply With Quote