Quote:
Originally Posted by Osirisra
OMG, that would have been one nasty to the open it up in the excitement and have that reveal itself. Not many worse things to discover than that!
Glad Orion are on the ball and sorting it out for ya. That first light is going to be all the more sweeter ey  |
I'm taking it philosophically, thanks Ken. As you say I will appreciate it all the more when everything comes together and those first few images pop out!
Quote:
Originally Posted by strongmanmike
Shocking state of affairs that Rick, I know Orion will fix it but still, no one wants to have such an arrival. Initially I was concerned about the packing but seeing these photos, that looks like serious handling neglect to me that no manner of packing would have helped  Orion must be spewing as much as you.
Hang in there mate, when the dust settles all will be forgot I am sure.
Enjoy the eclipse, it will work out, these are great scopes (when delivered intact  ) 
Mike |
Thanks, Mike. Yes, I agree it must have taken quite a beating.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gregbradley
When you say sensor was out of spec what was the issue? Too many columns or a grouping of hot pixels or something like that?
I haven't heard of a faulty 16803 sensor before.
Greg.
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Greg, the sensor had one really hot column the full height of the sensor followed by two more contiguous columns that weren't as bad but still noticeably hotter than surrounding columns. There was also a clump of hot pixels around 20 pixels in diameter, centered on the hot column.
These defects could not be removed by cooling to -35C and dithering wasn't effective because of the size of the defective area. The columns just smeared and the hot clump of pixels showed up as a fake star.
The spec for the standard grade 16803 says that up to 10 column defects is OK but more than one contiguous column defect is not. After sending a bunch of test frames to Truesense via Apogee they asked me to send the camera back so I'm hopeful they will fix it under warranty.
BTW, that's something to watch. The Apogee warranty doesn't cover the sensor. It is covered by the original sensor manufacturer. Despite the camera only arriving with the first owner in AU a couple of months before I received it, it was nearly a year since the sensor was sold by Truesense and the sensor warranty was due to end only a few days after I returned the camera.
Cheers,
Rick.