absolutely gutted, what now!!

[Wirral man]

After waiting a long time to get a heq5 and a decent scope to use with a d5300 i have been really happy until yesterday when my camera decided to pack up which is partly my fault (another story) so here i am with the gear and no camera so dont know which way to go....thinking of selling the camera and lenses and go for a one shot colour ccd but how much would a decent one cost which is on par with the dslr or better as i know nothing about them,

i know mono is a expensive route with filter wheels etc. 

really gutted as money is tight.. 

[newbie alert]

Be on the lookout for second-hand  ccd or cmos..most astronomers look after their gear and it's not like it's going to get over used here in the uk! I bought my atik 16hr at a very reasonable price to dip my toe in the ccd pond..

[alacant]

20 minutes ago, Wirral man said:

a one shot colour ccd

Hi. I'm in a similar situation except my Canon 700d is still working, it's just slow and noisy. I think perhaps rather than the old ccds, maybe the new cmos oscs are the way to go? The main issue is the cost; aps-c cameras are around the €1000 mark. The one I'm consideing is this one; hardly any noise and less than half the time needed. HTH.

[Ouroboros]

46 minutes ago, Wirral man said:

After waiting a long time to get a heq5 and a decent scope to use with a d5300 i have been really happy until yesterday when my camera decided to pack up which is partly my fault (another story) so here i am with the gear and no camera so dont know which way to go....thinking of selling the camera and lenses and go for a one shot colour ccd but how much would a decent one cost which is on par with the dslr or better as i know nothing about them,

i know mono is a expensive route with filter wheels etc. 

really gutted as money is tight.. 

Is the camera repairable? 

[Marky1973]

Why not try a modified DSLR? Is you are familiar with that at the moment - moving to CMOS or CCD comes with all sorts of additional considerations....MONO or OSC, what filters, narrowband/broadband etc

You can get something decent secondhand like this

http://ensoptical.co.uk/index.php?route=product/search&search=modified dslr

Or from somewhere like Cheap Astrophotography

http://cheapastrophotography.vpweb.co.uk/Available-Cameras.html

I bought a modified 100D from Juan a couple of years back and it was a very nice bit of kit? You can even get models modified so that they are still useable during the day - so you get the best of both worlds!

http://cheapastrophotography.vpweb.co.uk/Dual-Astro-Daylight-Cameras.html

[Wirral man]

which ccd cmos are good for dso work i have seen asi 385 cooled for £664 or non cooled 1600mc 

[Wirral man]

also which is better asi294mc or 1600mc?

[alacant]

1 hour ago, Wirral man said:

asi294mc or 1600mc

IMHO, the 294. Should be getting a hands on with one soon. According to a friend it will blow my Canon out of the water. Presumably current native English for better! Dunno. It seems like a lot to pay for something that may only be a bit better...

[maxchess]

What replacement camera depends on how far you have got in your learning. Also you don’ say what scope you have. But if you look on astrobin.com you can see what is achieveable with different combinations of kit. I am amazed what some have achieved with the basics: eq mount + 80ed + modest DLSR. In particular there are great images taken with Canon 450ds unmodified and these great workhorses can be picked up quite cheeply second hand.

[Wirral man]

i run a heq5, skywatcher evostar 80ed pro, asi120 mc guide right now i feel i just want to invest for the future and get a osc ccd/cmos and prepared to spend up to a grand £1000 i can pull some money back by selling my nikon gear as was only ever used for this hobby anyway. 

 

[wimvb]

14 hours ago, Wirral man said:

which ccd cmos are good for dso work i have seen asi 385 cooled for £664 or non cooled 1600mc 

Go for a cooled camera. You'll have better control over the calibration process, and can keep the thermal noise down.

[Redscouse]

Hello mate, 

I recently made the jump from DSLR to an ASI178MM. I originally wanted either the 1600M or the 183M however I decided that spending over 1k on something I hadn't tried before might be a bit risky. Will I like it? can i do it? etc. all the usual thoughts.

What I did was buy the 178M instead, filters and a wheel. This allowed me test the waters so to speak before commiting to a more expensive cooled camera. If I didn't like this style of imaging I would simply use my new camera as a guidecam and ditch the touptek I currently use. 

I have to say I love it! This is a more challenging way to image however I believe the rewards are greater IMO. Needless to say I will be upgrading to either of the two cameras I mentioned above in the very near future.  

Canon EOS 1300D 

 

ZWO ASI178MM

[Wirral man]

yes i thought no point in getting a dslr again so going down the mono road cant wait now!!

[Dragon_Astro]

I've been looking at the 178mm too, what scope was that m51 taken with Redscouse?

[Redscouse]

15 hours ago, Dragon_Astro said:

what scope was that m51 taken with Redscouse?

Skywatcher Explorer 130P-DS.
 

15 hours ago, Dragon_Astro said:

I've been looking at the 178mm too

Before buying I kept reading how these are best suited to planetary/solar imaging (the more expensive ones are labelled for use on DSO's) and how you ought to buy the cooled version to prevent amp glow etc. etc. so my expectations were not very high. When I (eventually) saw M51 pop up on screen after the first sub I was absolutely blown away! It completely surpassed all my expectations! 

[ollypenrice]

Regarding mono, whether CCD or CMOS, you don't need an electric filter wheel. It's a luxury, not a necessity, and mono is both faster - and more flexible in the moon time. With the arrival of cooled CMOS I would forget DSLRs altogether. They were sufficiently cheaper than CCDs to be worth considering but now that their chips can be had in cooled cameras that changes everything.

Olly

[wimvb]

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

you don't need an electric filter wheel. It's a luxury, not a necessity,

Just barely a luxury: I usually sequence my images L-R-G-B with about 5 exposures per filter, which is easier to do with an electric filter wheel than a manual one. Especially in -15 C. If clouds move in unexpectedly, I at least have a complete set of subs. Were I to do one filter at a time, I might not get to B. With my CMOS camera (12 bit and not much dynamic range) I need to take many subs to get a decent stack. Sequencing just makes more sense. And electric filter wheels aren't that expensive.

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

and mono is both faster - and more flexible in the moon time.

Definitely. The fifth position in my efw is Ha. Even Red works during a nearly full moon. It's blue and luminance that need darker skies.

My Pentax is on permanent retirement from AP.

[ollypenrice]

15 minutes ago, wimvb said:

Just barely a luxury: I usually sequence my images L-R-G-B with about 5 exposures per filter, which is easier to do with an electric filter wheel than a manual one. Especially in -15 C. If clouds move in unexpectedly, I at least have a complete set of subs. Were I to do one filter at a time, I might not get to B.

True enough, but only if your rig is truly parfocal. I find that at moderate resolution mine is, but at higher resolution (0.9 "PP) it isn't, so scrolling through filters automatically would also mean having an expensive and potentially unreliable autofocus. (In another part of my astronomical life I host five robotic setups on behalf of their owners. If anyone wants to tell me that autofocus systems are perfectly reliable they are welcome to try!!!)

When imaging at high resolution I don't scroll through LRGB with the electric wheel. I check out the seeing and if it's giving me a good FWHM I shoot luminance. If the FWHM values are poor I only shoot colour. I also arrange the session to catch blue at the highest elevation (Lum also) with red and green doing the best they can at lower elevation. But at lower resolution (greater than 1.8"PP) it is indeed a luxury to scroll through filters with an electric wheel. Given their cost, and the fact that they introduce a level of potential unreliability, It's for the individual to decide whether to bother, I think. I refuse to subscribe to the idea that they are compulsory! I put autofocus and plate solving in the same non-compulsory category. I'm a dinosaur!

Olly

[wimvb]

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

If the FWHM values are poor I only shoot colour.

Now, THAT's a luxury  But that is of course the best strategy.

My favourite web application is "Clear Outside". It's good at predicting cloudless nights. With on average only 3 - 4 imaging nights per month, I'm not picky, and collect as much data as possible. To get most out of this, I use a weight factor based on fwhm and snr when I stack the subs. And during post processing I use deconvolution in order to at least tighten up the stars a little. Earlier this spring there was a very noticable improvement in imaging conditions: clear nights and low humidity with good seeing. Unfortunately, that occured at the same time nights got too short to do any imaging. It's a good thing that targets return every year.

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

but only if your rig is truly parfocal.

Using a reflector and imaging undersampled, there doesn't seem to be much difference in focus position for the different filters.