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Old 16-09-2016, 10:42 AM
julianh72 (Julian)
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Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: Kelvin Grove
Posts: 1,301
It depends on what you're planning to do.

One-shot colour cameras are great for beginners who are just starting out, especially if you're doing mainly planetary work, or bright star clusters and nebulae, because you can be capturing colour video and / or multiple colour still frames in your first night out under the stars, and can generate quite pleasing results with minimal processing.

However, I think most of the really good shots are taken on mono cameras with filters, and therefore require multiple sequences of frames to be taken to capture each of the colour channels - so you need to be prepared to dedicate more time to just capture the raw data, and then you need to learn the techniques of combining the multiple colour images into a composite colour image.

If you're just starting out, I'd probably suggest a reasonable one-shot colour camera that you can buy for just a couple of hundred dollars (or less) is more likely to give satisfying results early on, but if you get serious, you'll soon be buying more expensive cameras, modding a Canon DSLR, filter wheels, guiding scopes, ...

I wouldn't be too worried about wasting your money on your first colour camera - you can buy some very cheap astro webcams on eBay, or spend a bit more for a ZWO or similar, and if you upgrade, you'll be able to re-sell your first camera for very little loss while you save for your next bit of high-end kit.

You'll notice that a lot of astro cameras are available in both Colour and Mono variants - they actually use the same sensors, with the same number of pixels, but the Colour variants have a "Bayer Matrix" in front of the sensor, which means 2 out of each 2x2 block of pixels are filtered to capture only Green light, and one each capture Blue and Red filtered light. The camera driver interpolates a Red and Blue value for each Green pixel (and likewise, interpolates Green and Red for each Blue, and Green and Blue for each Red), to produce a full-colour RGB value for every pixel, so each full-colour frame has the same pixel-count as the mono sensor, even though only half the pixels are Green, and only 1/4 are Blue and Red. The colour cameras are less sensitive overall, as each pixel only registers some of the light which falls on it, and the RGB colour values are partially interpolated, but they have the advantage in ease and convenience of capturing full colour images over their Mono counterparts.
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