Astro camera

[Beardy30]

Hi could someone recommend an upgrade to the zwo 224mc for planets and the moon predominantly 

[Elp]

What are your aims for potential gains?

I assume it's FOV, the 585MC is a good camera (I had the 485 which is pretty much the same but has amp glow (a non issue, especially for planetary work as you won't see it), I used it for DSO also very well, there's also the earlier still 385MC).

Despite the above my 224MC is still my goto planets camera.

If you want FOV and you're doing lunar I thing budget wise you'd be better off with a DSLR or mirrorless body and recording video for fast frame rate capture as the moon is bright enough, getting a similar sensor size in an astro camera will cost a lot more. This route however would not be suitable for planets, you want a smallish sensor so you can capture at high frame rates, with larger sensors you normally define a smaller resolution region of interest (ROI) so the camera can operate faster for astro cameras, don't think you can do this with a camera body so a planet will typically be tiny on such a camera without introducing Barlow's or equivalent.

Edited March 10 by Elp

[Beardy30]

Thanks think I’ll just use the Seestar 👍🏼

[Elp]

The Seestar is no good on planets due to short focal length. For the moon it'll be fine.

[happy-kat]

The camera chip in the seestar is great

[Beardy30]

12 hours ago, Elp said:

The Seestar is no good on planets due to short focal length. For the moon it'll be fine.

Tbf it’s not all that bad - personally had some good results on Jupiter 

[Beardy30]

11 hours ago, happy-kat said:

The camera chip in the seestar is great

Yea it’s fab I love mine 

[PeterC65]

1 hour ago, Beardy30 said:

Tbf it’s not all that bad - personally had some good results on Jupiter 

Can you post a shot of Jupiter from the S50? I'd be interested to see how it performs on planets.

[Beardy30]

 

 

[Beardy30]

Have a look at the above thread 

[tomato]

The view on the imbedded link above is a bit misleading, as it isn’t from a Seestar, that video is higher up the thread, and somewhat less impressive. 

[PeterC65]

Looking at the video from the S50, it's what I would expect, live video and the planet looks quite small. To be honest, it's not dissimilar to what I was observing via EAA before SharpCap added live stacking of planets. The planet still looks small but that's down to the short FL.

The only way I've found to observe planets via EAA is with a longer FL scope, and using the SharpCap live stacking function. The S50 does at least allow you to see that it's Jupiter though, and to observe the bands.