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Meade B 2080 / 56 This 8" SC
was a f/6.3 out of the box. under construction |
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Meade 12" f/10 LX 200 under construction |
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SBIG ST4 - Autoguider
This was my first ccd camera. Its autoguiding function was
excellent but it was not easy to find to set all the different
parameters to its best.
Also on planets it worked very well. When I
used the SBIG ST-8 with its dual chip I sold this autoguider. What,
by the use of color filters, I later regret very much
because by the loss of light gathering power caused by this filters I
sometimes could not find a good guide star.
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Of course I was overwhelmend
by the potentiality of ccd imaging. Finally no more hour long
discussions with the photo-shop. So Santa Claus, in form of my
wife, brought me a second-hand SBIG ST- 6. Here its
data:
|
Camera
Model |
Pixel
Size |
Pixel
Array |
Detector
Size |
Download
Time |
Interface |
Dark
Current
@ -30C |
Read
Noise |
Full
Well
Capacity |
Self-
guiding |
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ST-6 |
23 x 27 u |
375 x 241 |
8.6 x 6.5 mm |
~25 sec |
Serial |
~10e- |
23e- |
400,000 |
No |
please see also:
Bilder - ST-6
Unfortunately a later sold this one
too just to finance the 'New'. It would have made a good guiding
camera as well.
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SBIG ST- 8E
This camera, at that time still with a serial port, was
sold once at 8.000,- $ How prizes have changed.
But it is a good work horse which sometimes
is left in the observatory for several months. Only the
desiccant I
have to 'bake' more often. Due to
the long download time caused by the serial port (~30sec), I
gave the camera to SBIG to have the port changed into USB. This
brought me a saving of 25 sec. It is a pitty that this
model still has the small guiding chip TC-211 which has 192x164
pixels with 15x15 mue. On the other hand my model does
have the connection for water cooling which can also be used as
an additional cooling device.
please see also:
Bilder - ST-8 |
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Using exclusive the
Meade 12" LX200 classic and because the guiding of this mount
was disappointing I bought together with the camera the AO7 .
For my opinion this instrument is a must-have if you want to do
imaging with an LX200 fork mount. |
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Here one can see the
connection of the AO7 to the ST-8. In front of the AO7 sits an
0.63 reducer - also a conncesion to the poor guiding - coupled
to the camera by a "Captains-Wheel" . |
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To avoid mirror shifting I
used a JMI-NGF-S motor-focus (sometimes together
with a focus-motor added to the focus knob of the LX200).
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When I started with
color-imaging I would have loved to use the SBIG filter-wheel.
Not only the bad behaviour of the wheel under cold weather
conditions but also the prize made me buy a Neumann filter
drawer .
As long as one is working close to the telescope the manual change
of the filters is no problem but takes some time to do. |
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One way of connection:
drawer - extention - reducer - NGF-coupling |
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Another way: "AO7 -
drawer " |
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