Moving from Mirrorless

[FiveByEagle]

Hey everyone!

 

So i think I might take the plunge and get a CMOS camera. I use a Fuji XT3 right now and I like it, but i just want to be a little bit more integrated and it seems the obvious answer is to get a dedicated camera.

 

I use a 60mm APO refractor right now, on a guided AVX mount. Planning to also add a 127mm later this year for some extra reach.

 

It seems like when I shoot my stars are very big. I don’t really like that look in my photos and it takes so much to minimize. I’ve heard smaller pixel’s on smaller scopes is recommended as well as my sky quality.

 

My home location is Bortle 8 and my shooting site is Bortle 4. I do like shooting from home sometimes however.

 

Can someone help here? Budget is sub $1000 but trying to be around 6-700.

 

Thank you!

[MattJenko]

Your Fuji sensor already has quite small pixels, at about 3.7 microns I believe. Assuming your 60mm APO is about 300mmFL, that is a resolution of <3"/pixel which works well and is almost certainly not the reason your stars are large.

Larges stars can be caused by many reasons, like bad tracking, bad skies, bad optics. Depending on what colours are big with your stars, that would point to the root cause. If I had to guess, I am going to assert that if your stars are bloated with blue edges, then the issue is down to the APO not being able to keep the blue light focused with the other colours. This can be mitigated to a certain extent by moving to mono CMOS and filters which can be focused individually, but not eradicated as the blue subs will still have bigger stars that the others, but will be much better than the full colour Fuji which has to choose a single focus position for all colours. I had a 60mm "APO" once which was very much in this category, and I now have a different 60mm APO which is much more true to the name and manages this far better. Let us know which scope you have and we can confirm. If this is the case, then a new little scope would serve you way better than a new camera and fall within budget.

Also, post an image so we can help you further.

[Chris]

I could be wrong but I think small aperture telescopes produce larger airy disks around stars (larger stars!)

[FiveByEagle]

I currently use this guy + find flattener

https://www.highpointscientific.com/apertura-60m-fpl-53-doublet-apo-refractor-60edr

This is the last shot I took with it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bmxn8tk1i10vprr/wide6-denoise-denoise.tif?dl=0