Hi All,
Well, I have gone and taken the plunge with a cooled CCD.
MAN, what a difference!
After fiddle faddling with my unmodded DSLR and cooler box, cables, PSU, MPCC etc etc and still getting noise, what a joy it was to slot the new camera into the 1.25" adaptor, focus it, turn on the TEC to -5 deg C and in 2 mins I was guiding, the camera was stable and running and capturing photons.......wheeeeeeee!!!!
So, its not perfect by any means, but here is the first (brief) light from the new Atik 314L+
I originally bought the last 314E in stock, turned out to be mono, bummer....so I took it back and "upgraded" it to this one....more dosh, but a better complement to my scope due to the slightly larger FOV.
ITS SOOOO DAMN CLEAN!!!! I cant wait for a clearer night than last night, lots of low flying clouds meant I was shooting through sucker holes....anyhow, I am slightly happy...can you tell?
Here you go, I have only posted the reduced JPG version for now, it doesnt mess it up too much and the TIFF is only 6Mb anyway, what a joy it is to watch it stack 7 files on my SSD drive PC in about 30 secs (each sub is only 2MB)
Captured 6 x 30 sec and 1 x 180 sec, no darks/flats/bias, stacked in DSS and processed in PS CS3.
I can still use the DSLR when I want a wider field, but this one gets me sooooo close, cant wait to try it out on some planetary nebulae.....
Comments, good or bad, are always welcome.
Cheers
Chris