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Old 22-12-2010, 01:31 PM
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Paul Haese
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Paul Haese is offline
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Adelaide
Posts: 9,991
Since I was probably the second or third person to get one of these in the southern hemisphere and I have done a lot of work with the camera perhaps I should say what I think.

Sensor - good size but everything depends on your OTA. The KAF8300 covers a fair bit of real estate and suits most setups. I have found with the RC is is a little over sampled which means bigger stars on the bright ones but gives the advantage of being able to sharpen a lot. The sensor is quite good for sensitivity and can be used for images up to 25 minutes.

Cooling - yes this is an issue in summer. I purchased the water cooling unit to get around this issue. I found typically on hot nights 23 degrees I could only get -10C with stable head room without the water cooler. That is still around -35C from ambient. The cooling unit should give me another 10C and that would make for -20C stable. In your environment I would think it would be able to sustain -20C all year round. Overall the cooling is good but it could be a lot better.

Incorporated filter wheel - some good things and bad things about this concept. It only allows 5 filters and it would be better if it could incorporate all of my narrow band gear too, but that will never happen. Not much vignetting seen yet but some when using the RC. It does make for easy use though being incorporated and means cheaper filters since it is so close to the sensor. Good for the budget minded.

Intergrated guiding - This in my opinion is the best feature of the whole system. No loss of stars at any focal length so far. It is relatively easy to focus and once set does not require focusing again on any system I have used. The pick off prism is large and makes for bright stars to guide with. Guiding can be a little tricky to get sorted but small adjustments are better for guiding.

Overall I reckon this is a good camera, nice size, good sensitivity and great features, but if you can handle the cooling it would suit most. Don't forget about how light this thing is either. Literally the size of a CD.
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