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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
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