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Old 10-10-2012, 01:09 PM
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gregbradley
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Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Sydney
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KAF8300 is a good chip but rather small and small well capacity which sometimes is a factor in bright stars on fast systems looking bloated.

KAF16803 is currently the king of chips and will bring out the best in your TEC140. See Marco's images to see what it will look like.

FLI Proline 16803 is a great camera, but if weight on focuser is an issue (it isn't on TEC140 but is on some scopes like FSQ and many others) then get the Microline 16803 which is currently the only lightweight 16803 camera out there.

QSI have many happy customers and the 6 series brought it up close to the FLI. But they max out at KAF8300 which is limiting. Apogee also do 16803 and so do SBIG and Starlight Express. SBIG has the best range of
autoguiding solutions but STX is very heavy and requires the even more expensive 65mm filters.

So currently FLI Microline 16803 is possibly the best allrounder, couple it with a MMOAG and an SBIG STi guider and you are all set for several years. Apogee U16M is also a popular camera although it has quirky slow cooling that takes a long time and resists control by the user.

It seems the pace of new chips has slowed due to Kodak selling its sensor business. Also astro market is tiny so chip development is more for X ray, scientific instruments and perhaps machine vision than astro. Also high end medium format cameras.

Greg.
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