Well, I have gone CCD

[LewisM]

As much as I like using the Canon 5D MkII for imaging, I went for an Orion StarShoot Pro Deep Space. Only 6MP (as opposed to the 5D's 21 MP), but properly cooled, a LOT lighter, and no fart-angling about with cooler boxes etc. Cost was $1499 (Atik's 4 MP version costs the same) from Bintel.

We shall see how it goes tonight, so long as the wind dies down here in SE QLD - at least the sky is clear now, and DEEP blue, not that awful white haze from the burn off of the last week.

Not expecting QHY billion pixel depth, but hopefully still good results and less concern with heat noise, battery depletion, cooler boxes etc.

Maybe I should have bought another refractor instead

Anyway, be warned if you buy one and use Win 7 - the Orion disc does NOT have the Win 7 drivers auto-arranged - you have to know which to extract MANUALLY from their disc, as Win 7 will NOT recognise the auto-drivers, and nor will it let you manually install - you have to trick it by opening the "unknown device" checking the driver, changing properties (which allows you to update the driver, previously greyed out), and manually configuring where the drivers are - make it easier and download the 64 bit files from Orion into ONE folder and point to it. Orion REALLY needs to update this seeing Win 7 is the standard these days.

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Good luck with it, Lewis! Keen to see how it performs.

[LewisM]

Other users images on the net seem so-so, but who knows Guess it will be more a back-up if it works out average or worse.

Having said that, and I hate to criticise, but most of the user shots I saw had poor or soft focus, so...

[MattT]

Nothing like grabbing the bull by the horns! Fantastic to witness your rapid moves through this hobby...obsession Wish it was as clear here, think Melbourne should be renamed 'Land of the Low Grey Cloud'.
Cheers Matt

[LewisM]

Murphy... DAMN YOU MURPHY!

Gone cloudy again - high level cirrus, some alto-cumulus, and cumulus. Plus still windy. Might be late tonight, but who knows.

Got to find a better way to control it - MaxIM and I don't always see eye to eye.

Obsession---- yeah, describes me well! If my wife knew how much $ has gone into this the last 3 months... GULP!

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

The cloud will eventually clear. There's a low off the coast dragging it along, but it might take a day or two. Then there's the Moon. Looking forward to pix all the same.

[Screwdriverone (Chris)]

cool Lewis,

I am dribbling in anticipation too, I had my eye on one of these also

Cheers

Chris

[RickS (Rick)]

Good luck, Lewis. Hope you have fun with the new camera. Not sure I can forgive you for mucking up the weather, though

[LewisM]

Could have been OK last night... maybe, but I got preoccupied elsewhere.

Took me what seemed HOURS to get the Starshoot to focus - I had to use a GSO extension piece, which I was not too happy about. In the end, got it going with fairly good focus - will do it better on a star MAYBE tonight, if the high level fluff disappears again.

Doing a dark test and a full bright test, seems there is one hot pixel permanently on my chip, and a piece of crud on the INSIDE of the glass platten (I can see it) that would appear to have shaken onto there in transit (TNT took 2 bloody days to get it here from Sydney, even though overnight was paid. They claimed some line issue) that DOES show in photos. Don't know what to do about that (Bintel said it was the last they had in stock).

Test images look O.....K..... (that was a drawn out OK). Not getting that warm and fuzzy feeling, more the sinking feeling - I guess you get what you pay for, but I was expecting better colour rendition (seems OVER green everywhere).

Not sure how long supposed to let it run to cool properly. A metric sheet ton of noise when the camera is warm - unbelieveable amount in fact. When the cooling has been on about 5 minutes, the noise is severly reduced, so that is a good thing. I just hope all the stacking rids me of that one bloody hot pixel!!!

May yet end up being a bloody expensive cooled guider Back to DSLR, probably, even if NOT cooled! Maybe shoulda bought the cooler box and lived with the bulk

[LewisM]

Better idea - I'll run this camera through the bottom ED100, and put my DSLR on the back of my flip mirror on the guiding ED80, and dual image the same target - hmmmmmmmmm. Then put the guider through the finderscope like it was originally... and a finder on the ED80... I'll have things hanging everywhere!

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Bummer about the crud and hot pixel. Where is it? Middle or to the edge?

[RickS (Rick)]

Dithering will get rid of the hot pixel if calibration doesn't.

[Shiraz (Ray)]

Suggest you persevere and give it a chance to show what it can do. Welcome to the world of software patched together by one overworked engineer to support a small number of devices - be happy that you got it working.

1. The colour cast is probably skyglow and it is there because there is no processor trying to do a colour balance for you (as you have with the 5D). Even a $10k OSC will give you exactly the same. Easy to fix it up in the processing.
2. Hot pixels are very easy to get rid of - any decent software has bad pixel mapping and dither has been suggested earlier. Bad pixel mapping is possibly the best way to use your camera rather than full dark calibration, since the Sony chip should be fairly low noise with cooling. Since there is no set temperature, you would need darks taken at the imaging temp for best effect - so use bad pixel mapping if you can.
3. The dirt should not be there, but the results can easily be got rid of using flats (unless it is a huge lump). This will also correct vignetting effects.

The main advantage of this camera is the cooling, which will produce lower noise than an uncooled DSLR. It is not designed to work without cooling, since it does not have all the signal processing stuff that a DSLR uses to manage noise. The cooling hardware looks a bit underdone compared to other cameras with similar chips, but I would guess it will still work OK in normal temperatures. It also has extended red sensitivity and 16bit conversion, which will give a larger dynamic range than a DSLR - also significant advantages for astro imaging.
Good luck and post some more pics.

[Visionoz (Bill)]

Lewis - have you tried Nebulosity 3? Give it a try, http://stark-labs.com/downloads.html, don't have to use Maxim at all

HTH
Cheers
Bill

[LewisM]

Main problem - the colour channels are not aligned it seems - I know MaxIM can realign channels, but should they be out in a test shot? Green and red seem OK, but blue is WAY off alignment.

[RickS (Rick)]

Originally Posted by LewisM

Main problem - the colour channels are not aligned it seems - I know MaxIM can realign channels, but should they be out in a test shot? Green and red seem OK, but blue is WAY off alignment.

I presume you're talking about histogram peaks? Due to atmospheric extinction you will always get variations in the intensity of different colours depending on the altitude of your target. Blue light is affected more than red and green. Of course, it could be that the filters aren't 1:1:1 either.

Cheers,
Rick.

[LewisM]

No, the blue is physically shifted visibly some ways, giving a secondary ring.

I'll fiddle in MaxIM color align and see - imaging in the day to test is a pain in the ...

[bert (Brett)]

The blue shift may be chromatic aberration with the scope. Which will not show as well with your 5d2, as its red sensitivity is low, and you may have focus set more to the blue with the 5d.

I have a 5d2 as well and Osc ccd's. As good as the 5d is, the CCDs produce a far better image. That Sony chip is very sensitive in the green, so the colour will have to be balanced in processing, ESPECIALLY now that the moon is up.

Stick with it, and you will find you will have better results than the 5d in a short amount of time.

Brett

[Screwdriverone (Chris)]

Lewis, are you shooting with the Orion through an LP filter?

Such as a CLS type one? These shift way into the blue (my EOS clip filter does this dramatically)

Just a thought?

Chris