MS LifeCam Studio for guiding?

[thohem]

Hello,

as I have some vouchers left, I want to buy that Webcam. I know it's nice for the moon and planets, but what with guiding?

As I wrote in the 'Welcome' thread, I'm fairly new to astronomy but ambitous My next steps would be:

- NEQ6

- ST80 Guidescope

I'm not sure wheather to buy a AlCCD5.2 or a MGEN for guiding. Just to test (and because I just LOVE modifying things), I want to buy the LifeCam Studio. The Webcam which was delivered with the scope isn't the best, so I figured it would be nice to have a better one, which I can use to start guiding before I buy a 'real' autoguider.

Any advices?

best regards and clear skies

[Xplode]

Personally i think a webcam for guiding is a waste of time unless it can be modified with long exposure.

I would suggest going for the QHY5L-IIc if you want a color camera, it should give you problemfree guiding out of the box and is also a great planetary camera.

If you want mono QHY5L-II is even better for guiding, but costs more and for planetary you will of course have to buy filters and filter wheel.

Bot cameras have drivers and support for sharpcap and firecapture

[ChrisLX200]

I also recommend the QHY5L-II which I found to be very good for guiding and also planetary imaging. My colour version was plenty sensitive enough to see several guidestars in any random FOV using 1 sec eposure, so I see no need to go with the mono version. I have since moved to using a Lodestar for guideing, but only because I wanted to use the QHY as an all-sky imaging camera for meteor (and cloud!) recording 24/7. For that purpose the QHY can be equiped with a little 180deg fish-eye lens. Great product, and very reliable with PHD guiding software.

ChrisH