Atik 11000 Bin or not Bin?

[pyrasanth]

I'm now constrained to the fact that my seeing is not very good. I don't think I will ever get Atacama in my garden however we have to make the best of what we have. I plan to upgrade my imaging ONAG to the full sensor version allowing me to use my Atik 11000 camera. This has a pixel size of 9 um and a quick calculation at the 1960 mm focal length gives me an image resolution of 0.94 arc secs per pixel if my maths is right. If I go to a 2x2 Bin that will be pushed up to 1.88.

The question is do I bin or not bin? will 1.88 be under sampling me or should I just go for this & benefit from smaller downloads & increased sensitivity. Certainly wide field is not an issue as this image scale is really for processing smaller objects that will fit nicely on the chip with room for cropping- I certainly would not be photographing M31 at this image scale & not expecting a 30 picture mosaic.

Let me know your thoughts as the very poor weather recently removes the luxury of time to experiment.  

[pyrasanth]

I did a bit more digging and found the CCD calculator. This tells me that at 1960 on the Atik 460 the binning should be 2x2 to avoid over sampling for my seeing conditions. The Atik 11000 with pixels at 9 can be either 1x1 or 2x2 with 2x2 closer to optimal. However this does not clarify what I will get in practice so your opinions are still sought.

I could go for the L at 1x1 and the RGB at 2x2.....on the Atik 11000

CCD calculator useful tool http://astronomy.tools/calculators/ccd_suitability

 

[MartinB]

Binning seems a very sensible option if you optimize the advantage of binning.  Reduce your exposure time as well because the main benefit of binning the the theoretical quartering of read noise.  BTW you will still get the same field of view.