DMK21AU 618 ? Upgrade to ZWO ASI290MM USB 3.0

[Radman40]

Dear community,

I mainly enjoy lunar imaging and have had good results from using my image source DMK21AU 618 mono and a 10inch Newtonian. The only gripe I have is that the FOV is a bit small for mosaics. I am considering upgrading to a ZWO ASI290MM mainly in the hope of getting better resolution images but with the added bonus of a larger FOV.

All things being equal, if I upgraded do you think I would:

a) be really impressed with the increase in resolution of the images and consider the expenditure worthwhile.

b  notice  modest increase in image quality but  a small part of me would wish I had spent my hard earned dosh on something else.

c) barely notice an increase in image quality and wish I had spent the cash on one of many other bits of kit designed to deprive us of our income.

d) should stop wasting my time wanting more stuff and get the best out of what I have by chasing nights of really good seeing.

e) other user opinion.

Thanks for any feedback.

 

 

[Zakalwe]

A all the way Charles. The increase in real estate will be well worth it. The DMK chip is tiny.

[Radman40]

Thanks Stephen. Do you think the resolution would be noticeably better.

[Zakalwe]

The biggest advantage will be the much larger chip, which will have a bigger FoV and the increase in speeds, meaning that you will capture a lot more data in the same period of time. That will improve the amount of frames that you have for stacking and also help to beat the seeing.  You might need to upgrade your disk subsystem to cope with the greater amounts of data....I use an ASI 174 and I need USB3 and a SSD to cope with the datastream.

It could be argued that for Lunar imaging you would be better with a sensor with bigger pixels. You'll be using long focal lengths and the 2.8μm pixels on the 290 are very small.