Bintel Rig Simulator

[dylan_odonnell (Dylan)]

I developed this handy Astrophotography rig simulator for Bintel that ties in a few different calculators I've been using online, particularly the ideal sampling measurement and the Field of View calculation and preview. It works for scales from planetary to deep sky with a few common preview targets for scale. All written in PHP and HTML5.

This link pre populates one of my setups (Celestron 9.25" Edge HD with Hyperstar and QHY12 CCD) but you can change the inputs to whatever you like to test your setup.

https://www.bintel.com.au/tools/astr...&target=carina

[TonySize (Tony)]

I love these kind of tools I can play with them for ages. Quickly seeing the Ideal Resolution and the Resolution to get arc sec per pixel is awesome, I never really looked into that too much and my Tank has 8.18μm pixels, thanks.

[glend (Glen)]

Thanks Dylan. Useful. For those with Stellarium, it does something similiar, allowing you to pick your equipment from a pre-loaded list: scope, camera, etc, and giving you a sensor area overlay on any sky object. It works for eyepiece field of view as well.

[dylan_odonnell (Dylan)]

Thanks guys I debugged a few little gremlins from the code today but I think it's fairly accurate given wikipedia's measurements for the preview objects. I wonder if pixel size and FOV however should also be adjusted for quantum efficiency (the space between the pixels). My results align with other online calculators but neither factor this in. I reckon it matters to the true FOV and simulation of the chip & target.

Tonight I also added a visualisation of the preview targets side by side which is something I've always wanted to see illustrated, and added Pleaides and Andromeda at the request of a few Northern Hemisphere folk 😆

Nerd note: There are no graphics in this app.. everything is generated from 22kb of code.

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[dylan_odonnell (Dylan)]

So the tool seems to be popular according to the stats, which is great! I thought I may as well complete the swiss-army-knife approach to the UI by adding support for eyepieces which I've just done.

Yeh yeh, eyepieces. I think I have one somewhere. Maybe. I'd have to check.

Now the tool is a lot more useful for purchasing decisions I think.

Example Link to Tool

(you may need to clear your cache if you've visited the tool recently)

[RickS (Rick)]

Originally Posted by dylan_odonnell

I wonder if pixel size and FOV however should also be adjusted for quantum efficiency (the space between the pixels).

No. QE doesn't tell you anything directly about pixel dimensions and the pixel sizes in the specs already include allowance for fill factor.