Starlight Xpress MX516 mono camera 'NOW SOLD!'

[richardo (Rich)]

Thanks to all those that showed interest on this item.

It has now been sold to doomsayer(Guy).

All the best and cheers for now.
Rich

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Hey guys, this is a great deal from Rich.

The SX cameras are superb, I use the MX716 and SXV-H9 and they are fantasic and easy to use cameras and the lil MX516 is no different. Make an excellent autoguider too!

At $450 it's a bloody bargain

Rich is the sort of kind hearted astro nerd who would help you with any problems that you might think you will have (or pervieve you might have?) anyway so don't be concerned if you are not familiar with SX cameras.

Mike

[richardo (Rich)]

Hi ya Migel,
thanks for adding some further commentary on this CCD.
These are truely great cameras for sure.
And this one for autoguiding being a real astro camera, cooled and all, I never had to adjust my ED80 guide scope to find a bright enough guide star.

The parallel version as this is with the type II fast interface is almost as quick as the USB1.1. A sinch to connect up with no dramas..... I tried a DSI pro and this was total garbage in my opinion for guiding.....

If no one wants this camera at this price, then I'll keep it.
Not going any lower.
I realise Australia is a pretty lack lustre market compared to the US, but it would surely only compliment some ones setup who are after longer exposures on their not so sensitive DSLRs...... well one would think anyway....

Yep, I'm always only an email away for advice and help.... no prob there...

I'll slip you the readies when I sell it Mike

Cheers
Rich

[rogerg (Roger)]

I had been eyeing this off for autoguiding. I agree it looks a great deal. I Was interested about more info on how easy it is to autoguide, not being familiar with the Starlight Xpress gear at all. But, the reality is that right now my problem is optical quality, not guiding, so need to save my $$ for a new OTA... in 6 months it'll probably be different and I'll probably be wishing I bought it ... but oh well

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

What sort of grunt would I need in a laptop to run it. The only parallel port I have now is my old T20 think Pad.

[Dennis]

Paul - I run an SBIG ST7 off a > 6 ½ year old Dell Latitude Notebook, running Win 98 SE, Pentium 2 running at 266 MHz with 64M RAM and a 4G HDD and everything runs fine. The notebook even runs The Sky V5 at the same time. So, if the SX is of the same family/era as the parallel ST7, I suspect almost any laptop will do.

Cheers

Dennis

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Stop tempting me Dennis, I can do well enough on my own

richardo is this a 12bit or 16 bit camera, cooled or uncooled.


(trying not to be interested )



ps; does it have the M42 Pentax thread on the end or the C/CS thread?

[richardo (Rich)]

Nice to see the ball rolling

Originally Posted by rogerg

I had been eyeing this off for autoguiding. I agree it looks a great deal. I Was interested about more info on how easy it is to autoguide, not being familiar with the Starlight Xpress gear at all. But, the reality is that right now my problem is optical quality, not guiding, so need to save my $$ for a new OTA... in 6 months it'll probably be different and I'll probably be wishing I bought it ... but oh well

Hi Roger,
all you need is a guide scope, I've even used a SkyWatcher ST80 when imaging @ F9 with my old 8" scope. All sitting on my old GP and GPDX mounts via a home made aluminium assessory plate. Or you could use an 'off axis guider' but here you might run into 'in' or 'back' focus issues. You need to work out spacings as to what you have in the imaging train as to what will work or not.
Using a seperate guide scope, you need to sort out any differential flexure issues between the imaging and guiding scopes. This is all a 'work in progress' kind of stuff though.
There's no easy, magic solution when it comes to auto guiding, it takes time to get things up and running plus lots of reading as to whats going to make it all happen...... what sort of mount you have, what commands it accepts and what software for auto guiding you will be using..
Still, what in this hobby is instantaneous, it takes time to get a good imaging setup...


Cheers
Rich

[Doomsayer]

Hi Richardo
I'm definitely interested in the 516. I have PM'd you.
Cheers
Guy

[richardo (Rich)]

Originally Posted by [1ponders]

Stop tempting me Dennis, I can do well enough on my own

richardo is this a 12bit or 16 bit camera, cooled or uncooled.


(trying not to be interested )



ps; does it have the M42 Pentax thread on the end or the C/CS thread?

Hi Paul,
yes this is the 16bit camera and yes all Starlight Xpress ccd cameras are cooled.... -35deg from ambient via an onboard peltier which disipates heat to the camera body, not that you'll notice it.
The thread on the front of this camera is an M42 thread.... AKA as a pentax thread. (circa 2002 up use the 'T' thread)
I actually used my first SX camera on a p120Mhz system with 32mbs of ram... I know they can even run on an old 386 Win 95...
The native software runs well with win98se... I still use Win98se on my observatory computers running my other 2 SX ccds.
Don't know what speed your T20 Think Pad is, but if it's over 200mhz, it will $#it it in with plenty of crunch left to send correction commands to your mounts motor controller.

Let me know what you think..

Cheers for now
Rich

[richardo (Rich)]

Hey folks,
that certainly got things rollin'......

The MX516 is NOW.... PENDING....
to be sold to Doomsayer(Guy)...
If it falls through, I'll let it be known..

Thanks for the interest...

Cheers
Rich