Starlight Xpress Trius-SX694

[DKNicholson]

OK - so I've decided to fly in the face of the latest trend for CMOS cameras. I'm in the process of buying the Starlight Xpress Trius-SX694 CCD camera to replace my very trusty Atik 314L+ that I've had for 8 years or so. I have an Altair Wave Series 115 telescope, SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro mount, and Starlight Xpress filter wheel and Lodestar V2 guide camera. This is all controlled by Sequence Generator Pro.

Here's the question. Is there anything that I should know that I should find substantially different going to the SX694 from the 314L+? Obviously I have to put the SX694 data into SGPro and the FOV will be different. But will the exposure times be greatly different? Is the camera particularly sensitive to Red, Green or Blue, or Ha, SII or OIII and is it necessary to compensate for this by having different exposure times for each filter? Anything I might find useful would be greatly appreciated.

Yours aye - DKNicholson

Edited October 18, 2019 by DKNicholson

[DaveS]

I use a Trius 694 but didn't come to it via the Atik 314L. Probably I bodge it a bit but I just set my exposurs to give equal times to either RGB, or NB, and 600 subs for each. However I'm now living in a much darker location than I was so may well increase my exposures to 900 or even 1200 sec. One reason for using more, shorter exposurs has been to be able to kill aircraft (And satellite) trails with Sigma Stacking.

My calibration has been a bit hit or miss I'm afraid as I know I should use Flats but ATM have been swapping and cleaning filters so many times that a run on a single target would need many sets of flats that are not the same for each filter. I have found, however, that I tend to get better results using Bias as Dark, and not taking dark frames at all due to the very low noise of the camera, something Terry also advises in the manual. YMMV.

[DKNicholson]

On 18/10/2019 at 22:21, DaveS said:

I use a Trius 694 but didn't come to it via the Atik 314L. etc etc

Many thanks for that DaveS. The 314L+ is very 'tolerant' and so I've not been using dark frames. SX maintain that the 694 doesn't need them either so that's something. Most of my NB exposures have been around 600" and LRGB about half that depending on the filter. As that's what you seem to have been doing for NB I guess it's probably best to continue with those settings and see how it goes.

Edited October 21, 2019 by DKNicholson

[DKNicholson]

Well here it is installed - all dressed up and waiting for clear skies! Exciting stuff!

[newbie alert]

Nice setup..a friend uses a 460( same Sony sensor) on his 102..on it's first light he did a cracking crescent with soap bubble in under 4 hours of data.. check out his image in the imaging section

Good luck with the new kit..

 

[Dixie]

Very good narrowband sensor. I've used the 460 for quite a few years.

[CrazyCactus]

Apologies if I'm doing the wrong thing, because this is my first post to this forum! To reply to DKNicholson regarding his photo of the setup with the Starlight Xpress filter wheel and Trius 694... I have those, and my filter wheel is the other way round - that is, I have the Starlight Xpress label facing the stars, not the camera. I was worried in case I had been doing things wrong for a year or so. However, when I look at the instruction leaflet from SX the filter wheel is my way round. So my prism and off axis guide camera 'sees' the stars before the filters - which (presumably) might be the best way of doing it... (sorry about the lack of logo icon - I'll get round to putting one in soon).

(BTW, what I wanted to do was reply to the post with the photo explicitly... but I guess the forum just has topics and sequential order of posts - please let me know if I'm being stupid ;^)

Jonathan (aka CrazyCactus) Berkshire UK

[tomato]

Hi, welcome to SGL. I would agree that the OAG should be in front of the filter wheel (ie closer to to the stars than the filters), filter aperture and sensor size are usually quite tight so you need your filters as close to the sensor as you can get to avoid serious vignetting.

[CraigT82]

Also you don't really wanto to be trying to guide through NB filters? Or does that work ok? 

[tomato]

Agreed, trying to guide through NB filters is not a good idea, you wont be detecting many stars through these filters on a 3 second exposure.