Has anyone actually got one and if so, How does it compare with a lodestar or a BIG ST-i for example.
I know on paper it looks good but has anyone got any user comments?
Graz
Yep, I got one, but we have had perpetual cloud cover since it arrived. But I have it setup on an old OAG in the dome waiting to be focused.
As usual, there is a problem with the ascom drivers, they won't expose for more than 4 seconds. They say that will be fixed in the next driver release.
It cleared a little tonight and I got everything focused. I'd estimate it's twice as sensitive as the original qhy5 but sees maybe 30% less sky. The uncalibrated image is a lot cleaner than the calibrated image from the original. I can see I'll need a rotator on this new scope once I got all the bits set up so I can find a guidestar in the OAG.
Clouds where fickle so I pulled the camera/wheel/oag assembly apart and put the qhy into the filter wheel and tried some avi capture. Images looked very clean but it clouded over again before I got anything I could process up. Maybe next year.
Here is a screen print I grabbed while running the green AVI on this lappy. I cropped the media player crap off the image. I think I might get myself a powermate now
Got a QHY5L-II (Mono) recently and would guess it's about double the sensitivity of a SPC900NC. It's got a front ring that looks like it was meant for a microscope as it's too small to screw a filter on. Theo tells me there are new rings and adapters coming in the new year that will fit filters as well there is the OSC model coming. Did some speed testing as I run through a 5m usb extender and about 2m of cable and sure enough it slows things down a bit as does having the rest of my gear running. Here's the data so far. Haven't tried a ram disk yet but it should work as my hard drives aren't all that fast.
Cheers
Stephen
Pete, I want to try that here and compare the qhy with L2 but the weather
Here's a single 10 minute Ha sub from the big atik, OAG guided, but it's not a good example as I used a 2" GSO corrector and the sensor was about 30mm to far away yada yada yada.
The stars in the center look sort of ok. 12" newt on an eq6 and it was guiding on OAG banana stars in maxim.
It seems most people are more interested in the video from it anyway. It produces very clean images in video.