From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: June 23, 2008 7:47:57 AM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Flea 2 colour cameras..

Hi Mark;

On 22-Jun-08, at 1:03 PM, Mark Gaffney wrote:

Hi Milton, I was wondering if you`ve had a chance to use the 1032x 776 version of the 

colour Flea 2 camera.

Yes. I have a picture I took of M67 with it

http://www.outcastsoft.com/AstroImages/M67_20080307_MJA.jpg

I still prefer a CCD with larger pixels though.

I was thinking of the possibility of buying one of these early next year. I 

notice the pixel value on the higher resolution model drops to 4.65x 4.65 micron pixels 

compared to 7.4x 7.4 on the 640x 480 model.

You lose a 250% of the light gathering sensitivity with the pixel size decrease too. So with 4.65 micron pixels you need 2.5 minute exposure times to capture what a 1 minute exposure with a 7.4 micron pixels can capture.

It`s an extra $100 USD for this model & Point 

Grey also tack on $100 for a Development kit which has a IEEE 1394 b-a cable amongst 

other things. I understand they`re transitioning away from the Flea camera now?

Yes the Flea2 use somewhat different electronics and are support FireWire 800. Physically they are the same size.

I`m told PG 

don`t sell nosepieces so I`m hoping one from Imaging Source will do the job.

It will. The noise piece uses a standard C or CS mount thread and you can get them all over the place. It's just a "C mount to M1.25" adapter.

With the 

Unibrain Fire-i camera in the meantime, I was thinking of buying one of these nosepieces & 

widening the opening to accomodate the C-mount thread (as Jim Chung did with a penknife I 

understand).

The problem there is making sure it's perpendicular to the CCD and that the lens mount here is an M10x0.5 or M12x0.5.

I`m thinking at the moment I`ll go with a $215 Orion Short Tube 80 Guide 

scope to begin with & leave the Lumicon Easy Guider OAG til later perhaps.

Just make sure your not putting too much weight on your mount. As I said in another thread, you should try to keep the weight of Optical Tubes, cameras, weights, finders, cables to around 50 to 80% of the mounts rated capacity. Go over that and it won't track well at all.

HTH..

Milton J. Aupperle