From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: May 26, 2010 4:44:02 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Best planetary imaging camera


Mark;


On 26-May-10, at 4:10 PM, Mark Gaffney wrote:


Hi Alan & Milton,

Apart from some good results shooting the moon with my colour Flea 2 I`ve been mostly disappointed with results from it with the planets. I`ve tried Saturn & Jupiter on 2 different nights with poor results-& not from want of actually trying hard to get the settings right when I have a  planet in my sights...

So far my best results with Jupiter have been with my DBK 21.


It's so small it's hard to tell if it's even in focus, let alone if it's collimated.


Would this be because of some inherant limitation of the chip on the Flea 2 in taking these subjects? (as mentioned below Milton, you say the ICX618 is most sensitive in certain spectra).


No - it's skill and solving all the other issues you've had. You have to put in the time learning what constitutes good seeing, what is sharp focus, what  color balance is before you can produce good images. You also need to have a mount that keeps the target centered too.


Your Color Flea is 1.7 time as sensitive as a Color TIS camera is, as it has 7.4 micron pixels versus 5.6 micron. So a color ICX618 will have the same ability to gather light as the Color Flea.


I posted some results with my B/W Scorpion 20SOM recently of Jupiter taken since my corrector & secondary was removed which seem to indicate that the collimation is in fact not too bad..I`ve attached a snapshot again below..


There is no such thing as "collimation is in fact not to bad". It's either collimated perfectly or it isn't collimated. If it's off, or the corrector plate isn't in the original position (after you "cleaned it") then your going to get soft out of focus images all the time.


I've sent and posted links on Collimation in the past for you. You can't do it at prime focus and you need good seeing too.


Milton Aupperle