Horizon vs Ultrastar

[39N84W]

I'm using (mainly) a 8" f3.9 Newt. The last two years have been great fun with the SLL and Infinity software. (Sharpcrap has not been so good for me, so I'm ruling out a ZWO camera for stacking.)

But I'm wanting to step up from the Infinity camera. There's also warm summer nights and noisy images to deal with. 

For widefield I have a lodestar and a camera lens. This color setup is more for galaxies and planetary nebulae.

Which one would you get?

[geminijk]

The Horizon is going to give you a very wide FOV, more than the Ultrastar, and you may want or need a corrector for the newt, but good thing is they usually aren't very expensive. The Horizon will also have cooling. Now, I have not had experience with a cooled vs. uncooled camera directly, but what I have read is if your keeping the exposures down to say a minute, cooling isn't necessary. "Necessary" is the opinion of course of other video astronomy folks, so it depends on the eye of the beholder.  For my EAA, I try and stick with the shortest possible exposures, most 30-45 sec, from time to time to 60, and rarely up to 180-240.  I love SLL (have the LSX2) and have not used Infinity, but it looks impressive. I have used my SLL/LSX2 for a few years now, and here in TN it can get very hot and humid, but I really haven't been turned off by any of the views I get w/o cooling on my particular setup, but again I try to stick with 15-60sec stacked exposures. 

 

So all that said, I myself would go for the Horizon. Why? You seem to be concerned about the noise, and cooling should help IMO even on modest exposures.  Another benefit to cooling is you have the option of using the camera for long exposure AP, or with the newer OSC dual-band or tri-band filters coming on the market, its a nice option to have.  

 

Option 2 - Get a Atik 414EX (I think that is the model) which is basically the Infinity w/cooling, and you can use it now with the Infinity software. 

Thats just my 2 cents...good luck and enjoy either way you go! 

 

John

 

 

[39N84W]

But will the 414ex give me better star images (tighter) over the Infinity camera?

 

[HiloDon]

The Infinity, Ultrastar and Atik 414 as well as the SX825 Trius all use the same Sony 825 sensor, so there will be little, if any, difference in the image quality.  The 414 and Trius are cooled which will give some noise reduction over the uncooled Infinity and Ultrastar, but for shorter exposure EAA purposes dark frame subtraction or defective pixel removal tools found in SLL should make the difference insignificant.  For tighter stars and improved detail a finer pixel sensor is needed.

[39N84W]

Ah Ok.