MEADE DSI

[p1taylor]

Hi All,  I have a very old MEADE DSI CCD MONO dose any body have the specification CCD size, pixel size, number of pixels W and H, I want  to use it with a star analyser.

peter

[Oddsocks]

11 hours ago, p1taylor said:

Hi All,  I have a very old MEADE DSI CCD MONO dose any body have the specification CCD size, pixel size, number of pixels W and H, I want  to use it with a star analyser.

Hello Peter.

I found two on-line sources that state for the very first DSI model from around 2005 the sensor specs were:

510x492 at 9.6u (w) x 7.5u (h) using Sony SuperHad CCD but no sensor model number is quoted.

Both sources linked below.

Just to complicate things Meade very quickly also released a DSI Pro at around the same time and these had bigger CCDs, to detemine which you have take an image and examine the result in any photo editor, if it reports 510x492 then the above applies, if it reports 648x488, 768x579 or 1360x1024 then you have one of the Pro I, II, III models respectively and you need to search in Google (or ask back here) for Meade DSI Pro sensor specifications.

http://www.sightsabove.com/meade_dsi.htm

http://darrenwastro.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/much-ado-about-meade-dsi-color-1.html

 

[p1taylor]

I did as you suggested  and did a image in Maxim and got W 508 X H 489 it is a mono not colour so I suppose it is the first one.

peter

[Oddsocks]

2 hours ago, p1taylor said:

did a image in Maxim and got W 508 X H 489 it is a mono not colour so I suppose it is the first one.

Sound reasonable Peter.

The colour and mono versions were the same size, just with or without a Bayer matrix.

Not all the available pixels on the CCD are used for image readout, some remain covered and hidden at the edges of the die and are used for temporary well storage, black level sensing and auto exposure control etc.

Depending on the focal length of the telescope you are using and the resulting plate scale of an image with this small detector you can always try a double check next time you are out with the telescope. Take an image with the camera of a rich star field and upload it to Astrometry.net to plate solve, the report page after solving will give you the arc-sec per pixel and from that knowing the focal length of the telescope you can work backwards to get the pixel size.

(focal length of telescope  X  arc-sec per pixel) / 205 = pixel size in um      

(Focal length of telescope in millimetres, multiplied by arc second per pixel in plate solve report, divided by 205 equals pixel size in micrometers)

The result will not be exact as the focal length quoted for the telescope is an approximation and the pixels are not square but it should be close to what you are expecting.

Astrometry.net is a free service and can be used anonymously you don't need to register:

http://nova.astrometry.net

Note: The server for this service is sometimes down for maintenance or crashes when overloaded so if inaccessible when first trying wait a day or two and try again.

[p1taylor]

THANKS VERY MUCH FOR ALL YOUR HELP.

peter