- Details
- Category: Cameras
- Sismo Astroberry By
The ASI2600MC is a beast with the manners of a princess. What a lovely camera this is! It is obviously my main imaging camera and I am not thinking about replacing it with any other camera at all. Not even with the bigger and better ASI6200, as I already have difficulties with processing the massive amount of data this gentle beast can collect.
It is a beast, because it can ruthlessly eat up any subject you provide it with. It is gentle, because it can slowly capture even the faintest photon, while everybody else is asleep.
- Details
- Category: Cameras
- Sismo Astroberry By
I bought this camera second hands with the intention to "mod" it for astrophotography, which is something about changing the internal UV/IR cut filter on top of the sensor and replace it with a more IR tolerating piece of glass, in order to capture more Ha data, which is closer to Infrared light frequencies. I haven't performed any changes on my sensor yet, as I am enjoying the camera as it is at the moment, but I plan to perform it by myself. I will write a specific blog post about it when the time comes. I will test it on some proper tube and I am sure it will perform well, as it is extremely sensitive already with the cheapest lens available.
- Details
- Category: Cameras
- Sismo Astroberry By
The ZWO ASI294MC Pro is a cooled color astronomy camera designed for capturing high-resolution images of deep-sky objects, such as nebulae, star clusters, supernova remnants, and galaxies, through a telescope on a motorized equatorial mount. It is also suitable for imaging the Moon and Sun (with a safe solar filter).
This camera is very sensitive, but it's also the ampglow master of all of the ZWO cameras, I think. And because it's very sensitive, you need to calibrate your lights with absolutely perfect flats, otherwise you won't be able to eliminate those sensor imperfections. Apart from the ampglow, which is extreme at longer exposures, the ASI294MC sensor presents a random purplish pattern on every image (stretch your flats and you will notice too), which is also difficult to get rid of during calibration. When I called ZWO, they simply said "it's normal, we call it the 294 sensor's signature". At that point I sold this camera and I replaced it with an ASI2600MC Pro, which is of a different league, I never wasted my time with it, and it never betrayed me really.
Are you a beginner? STAY AWAY from this camera! Astronomical units kind of away.
- Details
- Category: Cameras
- Sismo Astroberry By
This is my guiding camera. I use it to guide my scope behind a William Optics Uniguide 50/200 (great combo), but I think it's worth much more than just guiding and I might use it for other purposes as well, in the near future. For instance as a planetary camera behind my Meade ETX-90
- Details
- Category: Cameras
- Sismo Astroberry By
This was my first astro-camera ever. It came with a CD-rom, no floppy disks, as Meade was irradiating cutting-edge technology everywhere at that time. When I saw this camera for the first time in the late 90s, I started looking for the shutter button. But there was none, obviously!
A long time has passed since then, and technology has improved significantly. It's with this camera, which was just spitting raw data out of a cable, that I started understanding the concepts of data acquisition, filtering, calibrating, debayering, stacking, etc. Amazing pioneering times for me!