Sods Law strikes again.

[paulbromley9]

After months of waiting to even see a clear sky, and despite the bright moon, tonight was the night I was going to finally get a chance to use my gear in anger ! that was until sod stepped in. I should explain I am a newbie to astro but have been a wildlife photographer for many years. I started off intending to use my 500 F4 on my HEQ5 but have ended up with a zenithstar 73 +flat with orion guidescope and an astromodded Canon 60d.  After a lot of head scratching I had all working with the software. This lunchtime I set up the camera and all was working fine, to cut to the chase when I switched on a short while ago the camera is dead and clearly something has gone awry internally. Perhaps a lesson to be learned here about buying the camera used and after sending it away for the mod, this was the first time it was going to be used. Anyway to the point of this tale of woe ...... I am going to clearly have to open the purse strings again and wonder , despite being a beginner to this, whether to go CCD. I would be grateful for advice on whether I should do this, and if anyone thinks its a half decent idea, given I am going to spend some cash anyway, what should I look at. Any help appreciated .

Keep well all.

Paul.

On a rock in the Irish Sea.

 

[Clarkey]

I warn you now, AP is a slippery slope....

I have a modded DSLR (Canon 600D) which takes reasonable images and I do sometimes use it as a OSC. I have not done it yet, but I intend to use it for some planetary and Lunar in the future. However, for DSO's a cooled CMOS or CCD is always going to be better. I have a ZWO 1600mm and filters and the Canon cannot compete. I would still be torn between colour and mono, but I quite like narrowband imaging too so mono was the choice for me. The other big benefit is the use of a darks library which does save time and effort. I would say if you can stretch to it get a dedicated astronomy camera.

The one thing a good astronomy camera cannot sort out is the rule of sod. Just different ones!

[johnst]

May be a stupid question - but you have checked that the battery is good or flat? 

 

[Clarkey]

I'm glad you asked. I didn't dare....

[paulbromley9]

9 hours ago, johnst said:

May be a stupid question - but you have checked that the battery is good or flat? 

 

No its not a stupid question LOL and I don't bite but yes, I have a lot of canon batteries but it was being run off an 8v supply too, so it's not that, I've also checked the two microswitches behind the access doors, there is no life at all !

I started off trying to dip my toe in the water at astro but as someone said above it is clearly a very slippery slope ! Thanks all for interest.

[rickwayne]

Yeah, the  trouble is that just about every expensive piece of kit is "Wow, it's so  much  better now I could never go back". You might wish, after the fact, that you had the money available again to do something else, but your astro-self will never regret  acquiring a dedicated camera. Makes so many things easier, and if you go mono, you have a world of new possibilities too. RGB,  LRGB, narrowband...I am really glad I dropped nine bills on my 183, tell  you that for free.

I think I will be glad I blew twenty-five of them on the  CEM70, if we ever see stars again.