Thanks Greg,
Yes as these are still on back order I do have the opportunity to change my mind I guess and was considering going back to the Lodestar for the sensitivity and also the cost saving as it will be primarily used as a guider and possibly not much planetary. At this stage I'm more interested in deep space imaging and also wide field so will have to make my mind up soon.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gregbradley
These little guide cameras are a great idea. SBIG has implemented it the best though plus its cheaper.
They really need a shutter to get darks unless you are running Maxim that will do a library dark subtraction whilst autoguiding. CCDsoft won't it will only do an autodark subtraction.
Perhaps this chip is cleaner and less artifacts than the previous chip and that would make the camera better otherwise on paper it doesn't appear to be a step forward. You don't need lots of MP for autoguiding you need sensitivity, cleanness of chip low noise, no hot pixels, good clean electronics, a shutter and a wide field of view (ie. largish chip). Ideally powered off the usb cable so only one cable.
Also you don't need lots of mp for planetary either its again low noise, high fps and high sensitivity, fast downloads.
Only SBIG STi does all that at the moment as far as I am aware. FLI do not make autoguiders which is a shame because they'd probably make a little beauty. Starfish isn't a bad little autoguider too but "big" compared to these eyepiece sized pocket autoguiders.
Greg.
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