Ultrastar with TV-60 for imaging - Is it practical?
I'm considering the Televue TV-60 with an Ultrastar as an ultraportable setup to image brighter Messier objects and dark nebula such as the Emu and Coalsack on hiking trips in remote dark sky sites
I can't use cooled cameras because of their high power consumption. Can anyone offer opinions on the practicality of using an SX Ultrastar with a TV-60? In particular how long an exposure might be possible at say 10 deg C before dark current is no longer manageable using darks.
Before I start I should qualify all the following by saying I am not criticising either the Atik314 or the Ultrastar cameras just trying to understand their capabilities and where they are best applied.
Thanks for your reply and for those very interesting links. It’s been helpful as I’ve never used a DSLR camera for astrophotography having mainly used an Atik314L CCD with exposures of half an hour to an hour or two. I hadn't realised that DSLR exposure times were so short. Then I found a specification for the SX Ultrastar from a retailer that said the dark frame saturation time was greater than 1hr at 10degC and 0.1e/s. I'm hoping it can be very much greater than one hour and comparable to the Atik 314 which would take many hours to saturate even with the cooler off and running at 17degC.
One of the comments in the link you provided gives a clue. Someone mentioned turning off the live view to reduce noise. And I know that the faster electronics runs the more power is drawn and heat generated. So I turned on the nearest equivalent to a liveview in the software that runs the Atik 314, which was the ‘Preview’ (Pre) for focusing and sure enough with five minute exposures it produced significant amp glow I'm not sure whether the background light was amp glow leakage or thermal noise.
Horses for courses perhaps!
So is it possible that the Ultrastar can have a very low dark current for static imaging but when used for live view imaging the dark current noise might saturate quickly by static imaging standards?
I’m keen to buy the Ultrastar as a low power low noise imaging camera but it wouldn’t be worth it for static imaging if it can only tolerate exposures of a minute or two. With Starlight Express good reputation I suspect it can do much better. Does anyone know?
