CCD

[steviemac500]

Quick question. What would be recommends for first CCD?

[Davey-T]

Second hand Atik 314L+

Dave

[ollypenrice]

It is budget dependent to an enormous degree. A CCD is the sports car of astrophogoraphy. What sports car should you buy?

I have almost always used Atiks and am tempted by few other makes, all of them more expensive. I'm impressed by Moravian and QSI as well but have no experience of the hyper-expensive exotica.

Chip prices go by area, so bigger is more expensive. Bigger means bigger filters and filter prices also go by area. Optical coverage of chips also goes by area and bigger means more expensive. In a nutshell, big is great but the price rises accordingly.

A smart compromise might be an 8300 chipped camera with the filters close enough to the chip to get away with smaller filters.

Tight budget, small filters, DaveyT has it in one, though the earlier Atik 16HR might be even cheaper. They will give the same result, and very nice too.

Olly

 

[swag72]

Spend some time with the FOV calculator here putting in all relevant CCD sensors and your scope combo. I say this as there are some massive size differences and if you are moving from a DSLR you may find the small Sony chips just too small. You can always pick up second hand and Olly makes a good point about sensor size generally increasing the filter size and therefore increasing the budget. 

Don't ignore the sensor size dilemma, you can ignore it at your peril as I have certainly found out in the past and it's an expensive mistake to make.

[Astroboy239]

I will also recommend the atik 314l. I just got in about 2 weeks ago and I'm impressed with it. Good for a beginner. It has a small chip tho. Or as olly said you can go for a ccd with the kaf8300 chip. 

Varad 

[Astroboy239]

Once you have learnt the basics of a ccd then you can upgrade to a better one. You can go to astrobin and check out images taken from the 314l.

Varad 

[Gina]

The Atik 314L+ mono was the first CCD I went for and the extra sensitivity and lower dark level was amazing after a DSLR even with cooling.  Good first CCD IMO.  Later I upgraded to the 460EX for greater sensor size and more pixels.