Moonshed

Thank you, that proved to be very helpful.

After much consideration and looking online at the specs and reviews, plus advice given here, I have opted for the ZWO AS1224 MC colour camera. Telescope House are selling it at £219 and I have been dealing with them for years, I even bought my Celestron 8” from them back in 1992! Thanks for all the advice, much appreciated. Keith

I have looked at both the ZWO AS1224 MC colour camera and the Celestron Neximage 93711. What puzzles me is that the ZWO has a 1.2 MP chip while the Celestron has 5 MP They are both the same price £219. Doesn't having more MP automatically make the Celestron a better buy? Or is there a lot more to it than that simple comparison?

I know it sounds like that but the focus was good, the image originally started off very large so using the electric focuser shrank the image down until it started to increase again and ended up with it spot on. It appeared more overexposed than anything else but nothing I could do by adjusting the sliders made it any better. I have since downloaded SharpCap 3.2 Pro and hope that will help, along with a new planetary camera when I get it.

Thanks for the information but I am afraid I don’t understand it. Is it saying that all I should see of Mars is that tiny red dot? The image I did get, even though it was just a white featureless overexposed blob, was a circle about an inch diameter on my laptop screen.

The camera is an Orion Starshoot Solar System Colour Imager IV. I have been using SharpCap 2.9 but today I have upgraded to SharpCap 3.2 Pro.

My camera is a Canon 1100D, un-modded, and I am using Sharpcap capture software. I can’t show an image as I was unable to get one. Your suggestion of looking at used cameras is a good idea. Thanks.

Those images look amazing so I will definitely look into that more. Thanks for the recommendation.

I would love to show you but they were so bad that the frame rate drop out was massive. I set capture for 1200 frames but after ages it had only captured about 30 so I gave up.

I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to take some images of Mars through my scope. First I tried using a tele-extender and my Canon 1100D, but that proved hopeless, couldn’t even get an image. So last night I tried again using a cheap £50 planetary camera I bought a few years back for getting images of the moon, which it is very good for, but all I could achieve was a decent size disk of Mars but pure white with no detail whatsoever, it looked overexposed no matter how much I adjusted the settings. I think I need a decent planetary camera. What planetary camera would members recommend bearing in mind I am on a tight budget? My max would be around £150 but may be able to stretch a little further. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks, Keith

Thanks for the info. I do have a planetary camera, just a cheap £50 or so job that I use with Sharcap. I have used it on the moon but never tried it on the planets, I will give that a go, as soon as the weather improves!

Thanks for the info, that looks like a good solution.

Okay I will give eos a try and see how it goes although I have always found APT first class in all my imaging. Regarding Barlow lenses I sometimes use them for visual observing but cannot use them when using my camera.

Hi Peter, I do not understand what you mean by a flip mirror, could you explain it for me please? Also I said that when I strip it back to just the eyepiece I can see Mars in the centre of it, so I do not understand what you mean when you say I am not on target. Thanks Keith

I’m not having a problem with target acquisition, my GOTO works great and my Telrad also confirms. It’s only when I switch to this high power I cannot get an image. Are you saying backyard eos is better than APT?