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Originally Posted by xelasnave
I wanted to ask about binning and thought to open a thread but it looks as this is a great place to ask...with my set up..80mm f5 refractor and zwo 1600 and using startools what binning shouls I select.
Startools offer 25% to 71% I have been using 71% only the basis I want the biggest☺ but lately have been using 50%...I dont know what I am doing or why but at least happy to own up to that flaw.
Hopefully an educational discussion will unfold and folk like me will learn more.
And I think from memory you can bin in sharp cap ??? If that is fact what guide lines should one follow there?
Alex
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Alex, StarTools allows you to use "software binning" to "add" adjacent pixels and increase signal at the expense of resolution. 71% will give you stronger signal but smaller final image. You have to decide what you want, sometimes you may want a larger image (to see more details for example) but sometimes you may want to amplify the weak signal more (smaller image).
Now someone correct me if I am wrong here. ASI1600 does not have hardware binning so SharpCap will "add" adjacent pixels to improve signal at the expense of the resolution. This is useful for finding weak targets in the sky or for guiding. However, the binning can easily be done at the image processing stage with identical results. So there is not much point of acquiring images with binning with ASI1600. Having said that binning at the acquisition stage will result in smaller images that require less resources for storing and processing.
As a note, some sensors (CCDs mainly) offer true hardware binning where signal from 4 adjacent pixels (for 2x2 binning) is added on the sensor itself before being read. The main advantage of doing this is that only one read is required for the "combined pixel" as opposed to doing 4 reads (one for each of the 4 pixels) and then binning in the software.
Effectively hardware binning on the sensor would result in 1/4 of the read noise compared to software binning on the PC (1/4 in theory, in practice it is not that effective of course).
Also worth emphasizing is that the read noise on the modern CMOS cameras is very low (ASI1600 for example) so that the hardware binning would not offer much improvement over the software binning.
Hope this clarifies few things about binning.