OSC CCD v DSLR

[adamsp123]

What would be the advantages of a one shot colour Astro dedicated CCD camera have over a modded DSLR? Is it very significant?

I have been toying with the idea of getting a mono CCD camera in the future but with the rarity of clear nights here (very rare) I wonder if I would ever get enough time to LRGB or narrowband image. I mean prior to the cold snap before xmas I had no clear skies for 3 months!

[Beyond_Vision]

The main advantage would be less noise and possibly more sensitivity.

Regards

Kevin

[steppenwolf]

I am a great fan of OSC cameras and have used both DSLR's (both modded and unmodded) and cooled astro CCD cameras and to my mind there are three distinct advantages and Kevin has hit the spot with his reply for two of them. The third is ease of use as they are designed specifically for the job. That said, it is difficult to justify the huge price difference but in the end, cooled versus un-cooled is the real argument.

[Andrew*]

However, some of the new Canon's have very little dark current...

[Merlin66]

There's generally an increase in QE ( Quantum efficiency) of the chip of almost 100% ( ie 30% to 60%) between a DSLR CMOS chip and a cooled CCD chip.

More photons per buck.

Ken

[Whippy]

I have been toying with the idea of getting a mono CCD camera in the future but with the rarity of clear nights here (very rare) I wonder if I would ever get enough time to LRGB or narrowband image. I mean prior to the cold snap before xmas I had no clear skies for 3 months!

One of the main advantages of narrowband is that you're not limited to moonless nights and there's a lot of arguments saying that LRGB imaging is no slower than using a OSC. Or alternatively you could do narrowband on a nebula one night when the Moon is about and do RGB on another night on the same object. Using a mono cam does give you a fair bit of flexibility .

Tony..