After playing with the Orion OAG with no success, I decided to do this right and get an STF8300M camera. Picked it up at AIC at a better price. Swapped out the Baader filters for Astrodon, with 5nm NB filters.
Of course, when I first installed it (after updating SBig drivers), Maxim had all kinds of problems. So, I broke down and bought the 1 year software subscription for Maxim. I was at 5.15, and Bob Denny wants everyone to update to at least 5.22 for some fix for ACP. No one seems to know what the fix was:( So, now I have 5.24. One of Doug George’s selling points was that they are supposed to come out with version 6 “soon”, so this should get me that upgrade as well.
Still didn’t work. Eventually, I deleted the SBig camera driver (64 bit with firmware), powered up the camera, and it re-installed the driver. Now it seems to work fine.
Spent the evening messing with it. Ran some VCurves so I can focus it. Adjusted the Edge mirror so it is focused at 3500 on the Optec scale, halfway in the drawtube motion. Tried to focus the STi – this is very difficult to do by manually adjusting the STi in the holder. This cries out for some kind of a jig for focusing.
Got the Tak and Edge lined up so they both point at the same star. Slewed to a couple of stars, they were centered in both scopes.
Took a couple of random images for plate solving. Looks like the STF8300 is 22×16.6 arcminutes, 0.394 arcsex/pixel. The STi “should be” 5.89×4.40 arcseconds, 0.51 arcsec/pixel? Will need to try again, my test image didn’t have enough stars to plate solve.
Looks like the 8300 maxes out at 65000 adu. Need to take a series of times to see where it levels off.
Odd thing: took a series of exposures at 0.9 seconds through each filter. The max intensities for whatever random star I was looking at were:
Red 39500
green 27100
blue 13700
HA 3100
oiii 1900
sii 3100
Is this right? NB filters seem OK, but blue is WAY less than red. Don’t know why blue is so low; these are supposed to be balanced for the 8300, don’t know if this is right. I expected that balanced meant that the same amount of light comes through each filter so they combine 1:1:1.