GSTAR-EX kit

[icytailmark]

hi i was thinking about buying this to start off taking pictures of the moon then planets when i get a tracking mount.

http://www.myastroshop.com.au/products/details.asp?id=MAS-071D


Anyone tried this camera before? Would it be a good camera to start astrophotography?

[renormalised]

Yes and yes. Good for planets, Moon and DSO's and a good camera to start with. Have a talk with Steve Massey (who owns MyAstroShop), join here...

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/gstar-users/

and go take a look at Steve Quirk's site...

http://my.hwy.com.au/~sjquirk/index.html (http://my.hwy.com.au/%7Esjquirk/index.html)

You'll get a good idea of the camera from these sites.

I use mine mainly for observing....saves the eyes:)

[tonybarry]

I have a GStar-EX (mono) and have found it a very worthwhile camera for a beginner such as myself.

It has very good light collecting abilities - using an 8" Meade LX90 SCT @ f/6.3 under Sydney light pollution (fairly bad) I was able to reliably discern M1 in the field of view in realtime (1 frame every 2.6 seconds). Without the GStar, this object was quite invisible to my eyes; when I removed the camera and used an 18mm Meade series 5000 UWA eyepiece, I could see no M1 even though the scope was tracking it well.

I collected 500 images each of luminosity, red, green, blue, and stacked them; and the resultant composite image showed (dimly) the M1 pulsar, about magnitude 16.

I have also observed NGC6300 in realtime (mag 10.9), the faintest DSO I have tried to date; 400 images of L showed up the spiral arms fairly well, though this is getting to the limits of my mount and I really need to go polar to get much beyond this.

I would recommend the GStar-EX (mono) to any aspiring astronomer. In my opinion it is the first camera a beginner should acquire. It does not have the bit depth or sensor size of a Canon DSLR, but for such a camera you really need a good mount, polar aligned, preferably guided ... and that represents a very big investment of funds in the scope, the guider, the mount, and the camera. It also represents a lot of time under the stars working it all out. With the GStar, a medium size Goto scope (unguided) can do decent work.

Note: I am not affiliated with MyAstroShop or Binary Systems. I bought my GStar second hand from a fellow member of IceInSpace.

Regards,
Tony Barry

[icytailmark]

would this camera work well with the new Skywatcher GOTO Dobs on planets?

[renormalised]

Yes.