What camera

[Trekrider (Barry)]

Originally Posted by gb44

Have you tried dithering with the current camera setup? Moving the scope at least a star diameter every few shots would improve the issue of background artifacts...
Anybody doing this in PhD?

GlennB

Thanks for the reminder Glenn, I just put together a new imaging computer and didn't spot that dithering is off by default - now corrected that

[Trekrider (Barry)]

Originally Posted by RickS

Barry,

Using a reducer is a reasonable strategy but a larger pixel camera makes sense too. You could look at a camera with an ICX-694 sensor (0.58 arcsec/pixel - still a bit small but very good if you get the occasional night with exceptional seeing) or a KAF-8300 (0.69 arcsec/pixel.)

A good rule of thumb is that perfect sampling is when the seeing is about 3.5x the image scale. Oversampling is wasteful. Undersampling is fine if you're looking for a larger FOV and willing to trade off resolution to get it.

The ICX-694 has pretty low read noise. The KAF-8300 is a bit long in the tooth and has fairly high read noise, so you'll need to do longer subs to get the best out of it.

Cheers,
Rick.

Thanks again Rick, someone else mentioned the KAF-8300 to me but it looks like cameras based on those two chips are out of my league - more than the ASI1600 with filter wheel for just the camera