From: "Steve Bryson" <stevebeam@yahoo.com>

Date: November 21, 2005 11:20:20 PM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: Having fun with my Fire-i, but what about better cameras?

Hi Tim - Thanks for the kind words.  On the brightness of Saturn, I'm using a 3x

Barlow, so am losing a lot of light.  Also I'm using pretty dense filters

(#23A red, #58 green and #39A blue) for good color separation in addition to

an IR blocking filter.  Do you recall the filters you used?

Sounds like you're happy with the Flea.  I'm now considering the high-res

monochrome version.  Smaller pixels, but my main target is the moon.

Happy Skies

Steve

--- In Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com, "Tim" <tjp314@p...> wrote:

Steve:

That's an impressive collection of images!  I guess I'm surprised to hear that your fire-i 

doesn't appear sensitive enough for Saturn.  I find my old Aplux version of the fire-i to 

be 

comparable in sensitivity and SNR to my Philips ToUcam.  I shot Saturn with the ToUcam 

last year after I got my 9.25" SCT, and got very decent image brightness from it.

As far as the more expensive cameras, I'm only familiar with the color Flea.  The VGA 

version's got 7.4 micron pixels.  The VGA version of the Scorpion (grayscale only, alas) 

has 

9.9 micron pixels.  But it's a few hundred dollars more expensive than the Flea.  I've 

been 

tempted, though...

-Tim.