Made a late decision yesterday evening to head out and try my luck with Jupiter, mostly a waste of time as it turned out as the easterly breeze always brings poor seeing and cloud, but there was one run which came out ok, before the clouds rolled in and ended the party... so here it is.
So these were captured shortly after 2am, our time?
I was already clouded in by then Should've already been capturing AVIs but I was waiting for later GRS transit.
Silly me.
I think 1700 == 3am. The poor seeing was already coming by then, but the clouds didn't arrive until about 4.30am. I could see Oval BA later on but didn't capture anything worthwhile.
I think 1700 == 3am. The poor seeing was already coming by then, but the clouds didn't arrive until about 4.30am. I could see Oval BA later on but didn't capture anything worthwhile.
I also had a first go at comparing my DX to a Dragonfly2 (on loan for a couple of weeks) and a DMK21AF04. Lessons learned:
- Clean the ccds of any new camera before you go out - the DMK was covered in black spots :-(
- My capture software needed extra tweaking so that it records the name of each camera, otherwise it gets confusing later on telling some of them apart, especially since I tried setting the DX and DR2 to the same settings for comparison.
- I need my 4x powermate instead of the 5x for the DMK, Jupiter is too big otherwise :-)
Next clear night (maybe tomorrow night) should be good for doing some real comparisons.
Great images there Anthony as always. The smoothness of the images generated by the camera is great and sure beats a webcam. Thinking that I will have the patience to survive with my SPC900 for only another 6-12 months!
Size-wise the DX and DR2 both have 7.4u pixels, although they use different ccds. The DMK has 5.6u pixels.
DX = Kodak KAI-0340DM
DR2 = Sony ICX424AL
DMK = Sony ICX098BL
Comparing sensitivities is tricky, as I don't know how the cameras are calibrated, ie I don't have any real way to measure the 0db gain sensitivity (I'd need a carefully controlled light box with known spectrum).
The DX and DR2 seemed very similar in my initial tests, but it later occurred to me that PGR (the manufacturer of both cameras) could easily have calibrated them at the factory to be like this. It doesn't really say anything about the actual ccd sensitivity.
However the DX has gain up to 30db and the DR2/DMK both stop at 24db. The extra 6db makes a big difference in practice. It's the difference between a dim image and a nice bright image.
The 16bit modes of the PGR cameras is also nice, and it is even more important when you are using a short shutter / high fps, as it allows the camera to more accurately digitise the lower signal level.
Should've already been capturing AVIs but I was waiting for later GRS transit.
