I finally bit the bullet and picked up a “real” astro camera, a ZWO ASI294MC Pro. It’s a cooled one-shot-color camera with similar FOV to the Canon T3i that it’s replacing.
I waited a long time to get this camera — it showed up the first day I was looking on Astromart, but then took 3 weeks to get shipped from Israel. Works like a charm, though.
Getting focused was my biggest concern, and it was pretty easy — the camera comes with adapters to place the MPCC at the correct spacing (the spacing is determined by SLRs, so the MPCC just screwed into the T-ring before 😀 ), and because I knew the T-ring was right up against the focuser before… I plopped the camera in, and it was less than 1/4 turn from perfect. More than close enough for autofocus to do its job.
Anyway, what with one thing and another, I only was able to fire off a few test shots of Vega before the clouds really ruined things.
This one is hardly worth posting, 2 minutes of exposure through clouds, you can barely see other stars… was a real pain to process in Photoshop, too — I need to work on my masking skills, so I can have those amazing sharp diffraction spikes *and* bring out the background, without blowing out the star. Shrug, that’s for another day.
The camera works so far, and I’m looking forward to giving her a real workout once the New Telescope Curse abates. Welcome aboard, ‘294. We’re a fun bunch.
♥