SDC-435 - Help with amp glow

[michaelmorris]

I've just acquired a Samsung SDC-435 for my local astronomical society for use on public outreach events. My first impressions are "Wow!, what a great piece of kit". My next thought is "Why didn't we get one earlier?"

I've been scooting around the sky looking at M57, M27, M82, Mizar, Alberio and The Moon. It's great on all of them. I can't wait to try it on Jupiter. Our plan is to use the camera for live viewing, not imaging.

My one and, so far, only criticism is some pretty horrendous ampglow on the top left side of the image. Obviously if we were using the camera for imaging we could subtract this with a dark frame. For live viewing I could see two possible solutions:

1 - on-the-fly real time dark frame subtraction on a computer. Does anyone know of any software that will do this?

2 - cooling of the camera to surpress the amp glow a bit. Has anyone tried this?

Thanks.

[Psychobilly]

Hi Mike nice to have you with us

I haven't had a chance to point my 4000 at the sky yet...

I see there were a couple of suggestions on CN... so will try these when I get a chance...

Peter...

[DoctorD]

Hi Mike

Welcome to the video astronomers.

Have you tried reducing the brightness setting in camera - higher settings make the amp glow worse.

DSS Live can do real time stacking - not sure whether or not it does dark

Frame subtraction though.

Clear skies

Paul

[michaelmorris]

Hi Mike

DSS Live can do real time stacking - not sure whether or not it does dark Frame subtraction though.

Paul

Unfortunately it doesn't do any calibrations (flats, darks etc.). The only piece of software that I can find at the moment that does it is PHD Guiding. This isn't ideal.

[West End Wendy]

My impression is that the only solution to getting rid of amp glow is to throw money at the problem.

The Samsung has copious amounts of amp glow, but is cheap. The Watec has none but is expensive.

Personally, I don't find the amp glow on the Samsung offensive because I paid very little money for it.

Tim