G'day Peter,
Quote:
Originally Posted by PRejto
Hi Brett,
An excellent and very well written and thorough review. I have used an ONAG now for several years and mostly second your observations.
Peter
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Thanks a lot for your feedback. Your comments in another thread were what prompted me to get the ONAG in the first place and I'm very glad that I did.
I pondered the idea of a motorized stage myself, but I can think of several reasons why it could potentially cause more problems than it would solve. Your ICX825-based camera is an excellent solution, since it offers basically twice the effective resolution than the cameras I mentioned and has a good pixel size and high sensitivity in the NIR. What is the readout speed like for a full frame? For what it offers I think it's quite reasonably priced but wished that ATIK had used the smaller-form factor for it.
I don't do unattended pier flips at this stage but I can see why it could be a problem on some targets, especially at longer focal lengths. I can't however see how it would be any less of a problem on -- for example -- a single-head OAG setup. A dual-head OAG could get the same star after a pier flip, but for the price it goes for plus the cost of two guiding cameras, an ONAG with larger guiding sensor and if necessary, a focal reducer, would be better IMHO.