Zwo asi120mm or Nikon d5000

[simondodd]

Heya,

i have a ZWO ASI120mm camera that I am currently using for auto guiding but I’m wondering if it will be a better camera than my Nikon d5000 for imaging if I buy the required filters....? 

If this is the case what filters would you recommend for deep sky imaging?

 

thanks in advance.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I had an ASI120MC and while it was a great little planetary camera, I would not use it for deep sky objects. I much prefer the much better resolution of the EOS 550D I have. I have recently been dabbling in deep sky imaging with the ASI178MM (6 Mpixel), using LRGB filters (much like I would for planetary) with my APM 80mm F/6. The result on M13 is shown below.

This is only based on some 2 hours of data (one hour of L, 20 minutes in R, G, and B each). Moving to other targets, I might go for H-alpha, O-III, or S-II as well. These narrow-band filters are rather useless on objects that do not show line emissions.  Much also depends on the size of the target. Many planetary nebulae would be fine in the ASI120MM, I suppose, but for big objects like M42 I would much prefer a DSLR to the smaller ASI cameras

 

[Owmuchonomy]

The suggestion would be to decide what type of DSOs you wish to image and work back to the chip you need. The two cameras you are comparing are vastly different beasts. Different chip size, pixel size, shutter and mono vs a Bayer matrix.

[david_taurus83]

I have pondered this. Is the main difference just the chip size? I have thought about using my ASI120  with my 200p to image small targets like the Ring Nebula. Is it sensitive enough to collect good data? I'd obviously sacrifice guiding unless I bought another similar  small chip CCD to image with.

[simondodd]

Thanks for the replies. I guess I will stick to using the ASI for guiding unless I want to do some planetary imaging.