Dear All,
On the last sunday I moved to the countryside, where I usually do deep sky imaging, in order to get a better local seeing. Far from asphalt and buildings, at my parent's house, amidst fields and meadows, I wanted to finally test the ASI 294 mono for sun imaging.
I was planning to shoot white light with the 130 apo and H alpha with the 72 ed guidescope riding on top of it. That is primarily my deep sky rig, but it's good for hi res imaging as well, if consideration is made for the ca. 1 arcsec resolving power of the 130 mm.
But, I forgot to bring from home the power supply of the etalon and the filter wheel, and ended up to be severely hampered in my testing. At last I could only do broad band imaging with an Uv/ir cut and a 120 mm baader astrosolar.
Well, not the best setup, but the camera performed well I think. I could shoot full disk at the native focal legnth of the 130 mm apo (910 mm) at 16 fps (2820X2012 I think to remember). At 1900 X1200 pixels I could get 50 fps, better than what I achieve with the asi 120 mm (1200 X 900 ) without roi enabled (29 fps).
I cooled the camera at 0 °C (it was a hot day, in the thirties, but I do not know whether cooling really makes a difference on SNR).
I think that, quite unexpectedly, despite limitations of daylight seeing, my apo at 120 mm aperture does worse than my mak 180 at full aperture. Details in the granulation were much less evident than what I obtained previosuly with the mak, and seeing was good, the border of the sun was really calm. But the be conclusive I have to check with the red filter.
The 294 mono also allows to shoot at 48 megapixel, by acting on the camera firmware, which can be unlocked by the latest sharpcap and firecapture releases but I did not do that. I normally use the sensor at 2X2 binning which is the native 11 Mpixel size, because I believe one looses some dynamic range with the "super resolution". Frame rate would also be reduced by such a large format and I felt it not very practical.
Well, waiting to repeat the experiment with my full setup.
testing asi 294 mono white light
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testing asi 294 mono white light
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- 910 mm a120 mm astrosolar
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- marktownley
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Re: testing asi 294 mono white light
Nice results with the new camera!
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- Montana
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Re: testing asi 294 mono white light
Some great fine detail with all those little pores when I take equipment away from home I am always paranoid I forgot something vital
Alexandra
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Re: testing asi 294 mono white light
Well done, I was looking to see some results taken with the 294.
Franco
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Re: testing asi 294 mono white light
I will do some more testing on the next sunday. It seems we are expecting a strong HP in southern/central europe. It will be hot, but maybe seeing will be good (if humidity stays at a decent level)
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Re: testing asi 294 mono white light
Tell me about it, nothing like driving for almost 2 hours only to realize you left the laptop at home and can't capture anything, lol.
Lunt ls100tha single stacked + hinode solar guider on ioptron cem26 mount
asi178mm
asi294mm
2x, 3x, and 4x telecentrics
0.6x and 0.4x telecompressors
asi178mm
asi294mm
2x, 3x, and 4x telecentrics
0.6x and 0.4x telecompressors
- AJamesB
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Re: testing asi 294 mono white light
Good shots, I've really like the camera so far, its quite versatile with the larger sensor, ability to use really small pixels, or to use a small ROI with larger pixels and a telecentric and still get pretty decent frame rates.
Lunt ls100tha single stacked + hinode solar guider on ioptron cem26 mount
asi178mm
asi294mm
2x, 3x, and 4x telecentrics
0.6x and 0.4x telecompressors
asi178mm
asi294mm
2x, 3x, and 4x telecentrics
0.6x and 0.4x telecompressors