From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: July 15, 2005 3:35:16 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Re: just wishing

Hi Tim;

Oops, I hit the send button before I was done.

On 15-Jul-05, at 2:44 PM, Tim wrote:

-------------------SNIP

I'm still interested in what Milton might recommend for planets/DSOs, assuming that a

firewire camera could do both well. I never got a response about my question regarding

the one cooled microscope camera on the list of supported cameras on Milton's website -

the Quantifire.

If your talking about exposures less than 10 minutes uncooled, the Flea Color 640x480 camera is pretty decent for the money your spending. I ran some 10 minute exposure tests with the camera wrapped in a heavy bath towel under my desk, the gains set to zero and the dark current and amp glow noise noise level was low enough that it could be taken out with dark frame. All you need to do is modify the supplied hiruse trigger connector by connecting pins 0 and pin 1 (solder them or just bending them over so they touch) and Astro IIDC will allow up to 60 minute exposures.

With that $45 CDN peltier Cooler unit I bough (I also added a $15 CDN Pentium CPU Heat sink and Fan to the hot side) up attached to it, it can keep the camera and electronics in the 10 degree C / 50 F range, when in dead air air temp is 30 C / 86F. With cooling off, the camera is running at about 45 C / 113 F and that brings the noise level up a lot.

And speaking of crappy weather, June was the wettest month in Calgary history (120+ years or so) and now that it's finally cleared up with dark clear skies and no 80 km winds, my motor drive has packed it in :(.

TTYL..

Milton J. Aupperle

President

ASC - Aupperle Services and Contracting

Mac Software (Drivers, Components and Application) Specialist

#1005 - 815 14th Avenue. S.W.

Calgary Alberta Canada T2R0N5

1-(403)-229-9456

milton@outcastsoft.com