Adam J

In the case of older cameras I would agree but not in the case of the latest IMX5xx series sensors. They are free from ampglow so dont require perfectly matched calibration frames and have very few hot pixels that are removed by an approximate matching dark. If you have the money then why not get the cooled one, but lots of people cant afford to pay for things that they dont strictly require. Anyway ill not labour the point further now, another make is offering a passively cooled model, so its not like ZWO are the only option. Over the next few years people / consumers will naturally slowly acclimatise to the idea that cooling is not as important as it used to be. These things take time. Adam

and Norway and Iceland and Alaska, who are potentially paying for cooling they don't need, its about the additional cost which is likely a 300 - 400 pound saving if you don't need the cooling. If you had it why would you not use it anyway. Adam

Someone subconsciously heard my request for +20c its a IMX571 but the dark current and read noise are in the same ball park. Please lobby ZWO to being out the uncooled IMX533 camera. Adam

You can get an EQ direct cable specific to the AZGTI from FLO then download the none WiFi firmware flash program from SW and use the cable. That should recover the situation.

I think that the thing here is that the lack of amp glow, the low read noise, the high QE and the very low dark current combine to mean that the advantages to cooling are minimal under most conditions. Perhaps someone with the camera can perform an experiment to show this, a short stack with cooling on followed by one with it off??? Assuming that your going for Gain 200 then the read noise is about 1.3e that is still larger than the dark current even for a 60 second exposure at +20c at about 1.1e, and your are unlikely to need much longer exposures so long as your scope is faster than F5, on something like a RASA at F2 cooling would just be a waste of money. When you consider the other noise sources it is very difficult to argue that at ambient temperatures of up to 20c this chip really requires cooling. Looks like Player one astronomy will be offer in a model with passive cooling though even if ZWO have been incorrectly convinced that this is not a good idea, despite originally clearly grasping that it is possible with this sensor as they tried to offer it as an option. My prediction for the future is that as advancements in CMOS continue cooling will simply `no longer be required for astronomy cameras at least in UK conditions at first. Its just going to take consumers and retailers some time to get their head around that idea though. Adam

Really need to see an uncropped sub to make any conclusions.

Yes mini USB over USB-C is actually a shocking design choice in this day and age and I can find no logical or technical reason why they would do such a thing. 😕

That just confirms that the market doesn't really understand the technology lol.

This is the foil spacer I use. To be exact I used aluminium tape from B&Q, rapped around the ring one and a half times. It wedges the primary cell just enough to bring it into perfect alignment.

Thanks, here is my thread. https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/289309-adam-js-dslr-water-cooling-thread/

The problem is once you do that you then want three. Why not get RGB on separate scopes you ask yourself.

For OP, bottom line is I would not worry too much about 2.9um pixels on OSC at your focal length, you can certainly bin the final image in software Adam

Yes I for planets / lucky imaging I can see why that would work out. Adam

Yes of course but it reduces SNR and to be honest I have never seen it work convincingly, most likely because most people are oversampling relative to seeing / optics in any case. Adam

See what I added about about AHD but also Green is weighted over red and blue in the case of the luminescence calculation, but this will no doubt be adaptive with relative RGB pixel intensity (cant interpolate a red image with a non existent green channel) and to an extend assumes that green with be the brightest RGB component (not always the case with astronomy), should work well for galaxy imaging mind you. Most modern algorithms are adaptive for that matter. I would be happy to modify my previous statement (and almost did originally) to say that resolvable detail in mono will be between 1.414 and 2.0 OSC resolution though. Adam

I think its to do with Nyquist sampling theory. I thought that this is exactly what happens when pixel luminace is calculated and that the luminace component to the pixel is calculated separately from RGB balance. I will look into it in more depth. Something interesting on Adaptive Homogeneity-Directed that apparently adjusts the plain of interpolation. In essence I believe this is doing as I have described? Seems to be used by Astropixel processor. In general its orientated to take advantage of the Green pixel grid orientation but adapts itself when edges are detected to reduce colour artefacts. All in all though we are getting off topic now. Adam

Yes its to do with green pixels and the location of the interpolated pixel which is calculated for the centre of each four pixel RGGB group, incidentally also one of the reasons why sensors tend to have additional rows / cols of pixels over and above those that are declared / output. But also the shifting of the location of the virtual RGB pixel also leads to resolution being calculated on the diagonal separation and not the X/Y pixel separation. At least that is how I understand it. Adam

Most quote half the resolution of a mono camera for OSC but this is wrong. Ill explain with a diagram at lunch. Adam

Not 100% true now as dark current and amp glow on the most recent cameras is so low that set point cooling is no longer 100% required. The 533mm for example will work well at high gain and 60s exposures. With not much additional benefit to using cooling unless your ambient temperatures are very high at night so 20c+. Of course its always best to get one with cooling if you can but the performance delta from uncooled is just not what it used to be. Adam

Remember that the resolution of a OSC camera is 1.5X less than a Mono of the same pixel size. Adam

Better is the wrong word. The 294MC is a pain to calibrate and really for that reason most people shout stay clear in my opinion, but if you willing to work with it then it is a bigger sensor. Adam

If you are planning on getting one without cooling then both the 533 and 585 have zero amp glow and very low dark current. I would not get a 183 it has amp glow and is difficult to calibrate without set point cooling. FOV will be limited with a 80ED on the 585 but there are plenty of smaller brighter objects you can have a go at. So if the 533 is out of budget certainly get the 585 over the 183. Adam

As a physicist I have to agree with Scotty.

Its in the garage so ill have to take some pictures tomorrow after work. What journal was it for? Adam