Adam J

better but still looking a little green in the background on my screen.

Does anyone know if this will work with a EQ direct cable / eqmod?

Esprit optics are for the most part good but stay clear of the 80mm version in my opinion as its the one that gives people issues for the most part. Adam

It is a good scope for the money. Adam

I was always worried that that filter adaptor would cause vignetting on the Esprit 100, any issues? Adam

I think its meant to be but it does not really compete the, red cat is superior in performance and price to performance. Thanks for the bracket link. Adam

The issue for me is that the 180 is so portable that to be honest the 135 is no more portable for being smaller. The 135 is a 30mm apperture and so if you use a 1.25 inch filter on the front of it you are going to narrow that down further to only 24-26mm. So F5-F5.5 territory. I think the mount is better designed on the 135 though easier to slick a finder shoe on it. None of that invalidates the 135 so by all means go for it, but I can see why the 180 is the most popular model. The 230 is not allot more focal length than the 180 considering the price difference and sits at a price point that cant be justified against its FPL53 based competition. Adam

Have a trip booked specifically to image this from Tenerife in 2023, to think I was worried at one stage it would not be sufficiently elevated lol.

The 294mc is not one I would suggest for a first astro camera at the very least calibration is a pain in the behind. Get the ASI1600mm pro or the 533 mono or OSC. But while people do get the 294 to work well for them. I would not recommend that someone new to dedicated astro cameras put themselves through.

Mono + Mono in general. Allows you to collect duel band data HOO in a single evening. For LRGB you can use one for L and the other for RGB. Its just more flexible. The only time I might go for Duel OSC or Mono + OSC is if I did not intend to do any narrow band imaging and wanted to save some money on filters. Adam

Its a big sensor for this type of scope, but i cant help but look at your image zoomed in and wonder if you are perfectly focused. It may be that you are best off focusing 1/3rd of the way out from the centre of the image. But then again I don't see split diffraction spikes so maybe not. Maybe just crop and live with it as I dont think anything is wrong with the scope as such. Adam

Slightly cheaper than AZ GTI versions if you dont want to do any imaging. At least until SW increase their prices. Adam

I am told it has less CA than the 180 but it's probably marginal. I don't know of anyone on here using one at the moment. Some people on cloudy nights is using one though.

Baader click lock may work for you in this instance.

But as the camera is an OSC do we not effectively consider it as sampling (by your reckoning) x2 the pixel size? If so that would make the effective pixel size 5.8um? That being the biggest problem with the suitability calculator? Adam

I think that the reason that i have a preference for a pulley system is the lack of backlash, which is already low on a helical focuser. Adam

You might be right in the case of an OSC. Spot size on the RASA 8 is a minimum of 3um in green but quite allot larger in Red as would be for HA and Blue. I strongly suspect that you would still be seeing limited most of the time at 1.5um sampling though. I do notice that my Esprit 100 images look significantly sharper than what i tend to see posted from a RASA 8. Either way its possible to over think such things, the result speaks for itself. Adam

And thats exactly what I am talking about, except the result would have been even better with the 533 as the rasa 8 is still oversampling with 2.9um pixels on the 585 unless he was binning that image. But what a fantastic result with an uncooled camera. No one with a RASA should be using a cooled camera you just dont need long enougth exposures to warrent it. Adam

Anything up to about 13.8volts should be fine still for astronomy equipment. I have always run my kit on a 13.8volt bench supply. Adam

I would be more interested in the mono 585mm for DSO imaging with a 100 - 400mm focal length scope as the 2.9um pixels leave room for binning at the longer focal lengths while still having a useful FOV. Should be really good for galaxy imaging too for longer focal lengths 600mm+ and you could use DSO lucky imaging for even longer focal lenghts. Adam

That thing has massive potential for galaxy imaging on long focal length scopes, just not seen a dark frame from it yet. Adam

Its just momentum in the market, all past cameras really did need set point cooling, things are now slowly moving to the point when that is no longer the case but users will take longer to cotton onto that and the majority will continue to quote the old thinking until more images start rolling in from uncooled sensors. The the dialog will slowly shift as it has with CCD vs CMOS, although even in that case you still find some die hards. In my opinion though, its a case of "if you build it they will come". If you don't build then eventually someone else will. An unfortunate lesson learnt by some of the older camera makes who were sluggish to move over to CMOS. Adam

double post, admin remove

I know @PadrePeace has done DSO work with the 224mc but on galaxies. I would think some bright planetary nebula might work well too. But as for that vast majority of larger emission nebula then the sensor is just too small and I would not think that it would do nearly as well in Narrow Band as it manages in RGB. There is the Player One Neptune camera based on the IMX533 that would work will for uncooled DSO imaging and has a much larger sensor than the 226. My current position is that if you can afford cooling get a cooled camera, if you really cant or dont want it for some other reason then what you need to look for are sensors with no amp glow and low dark current, most of the IMX5xx series fit into this group. Adam

You would know about demand more than anyone else Steve so I will not argue that, I am providing a technical argument for a uncooled IMX533 camera as opposed to a commercial one. Markets always take time to adjust to new ideas, by the time we are talking about IMX7xx sensors then I am sure the direction of technological travel will have become apparent to the average consumer. Adam