Quote:
Originally Posted by sejanus
How much does an off the shelf autoguider generally cost anyway?
|
Most of today’s auto guiders require a computer to operate them from, so you’ll have to factor that into the cost.
I was lucky to pick up an Orion Deep Space Star Shooter from Ron at
Sirius Optics some time ago (at a nice club discount too - thanks Ron!). The current prices are around the $595 mark I think, although the camera has now been discontinues due to supply problems to Orion in the US.
I purchased it specifically for auto guiding as it had a Peltier module for thermo electric cooling (TEC) which gives me a nice, clean field in which to find a star. Without the TEC, once you start exposing for say 5 or 10 secs to find a guide star, you also get thermal noise in the form of hot pixels and the camera may try to guide on a hot pixel, or become confused by hot pixels.
There are modified webcams that can be used and I have heard of people using LPI’s and DSI’s.
So, for less that $550, I managed to meet my requirements of:
- Lightweight at the focuser to minimise loading and flexure.
- TEC to minimise thermal noise.
- Reasonable chip size of 742 x 582 pixels.
- USB connection to PC for fast downloads.
- Dedicated auto guider.
- Nice software interface with Craig Stark’s free PHD Guiding as I don’t like the bundled Maxim Essentials.
Cheers
Dennis