CCD Cameras or my remote observatory

Camera

The cameras I use

Pete's Pages

Want a simple explanation to:-
Flat Fields
Dark Frames
Bias Frames

Cameras

S-Big ST7
Meade 216-XT

S-Big ST7
Compared to the Meade 216 the ST7 is a revelation. The software, CCDopsw supplied with the camera was good. I don't remember it ever crashing and it did everything it said it would. The only problem with it is that it ran in dos so having other programs running at the same time was a little problematic. It also came with CCDops which was a widows based product, but this had limited facilities. As I remember they did release a full widows program that supported all the cameras facilities but as I had already purchased the camera I would have to pay for it. I then got MaxIm CCD and did not bother with any of the supplied programs after that so I expect they may have changed since I last looked at them. Which ever program you use the camera seems to work very well. It is reliable and fast. The only tricky bit for me was setting up the auto guider to work at it's best. It is OK. in it's standard mode but I think to get the best out of it needs some experience and practice. One bonus I found with this camera after I set it up was the ability to control the scope with the camera software and the planetarium software at the same time without disconnecting one or the other. This means that I move the scope with the planetarium program to the desired object then center it and find a guide star with the camera software. I have three parallel ports on the computer I use to operate this camera and it only work properly on one of them. It will work on the other two but there is a certain amount of interference with them. This can best be seen with the guide window on show in MaxIm CCD. I get a nice clear crisp star in the middle and them every now and then a light patch of interference appears and this ruins the guiding as the program thinks the star has moved and moves the scope to a new position. Between the camera and the scope there is about 90 feet of cable and this seems well within it's capabilities. This cable is heavily shielded and quite heavy. Because of this I run it to the pier and then use the lighter supplied cable to run to the scope. This makes balancing the scope much easier. I have notice as well the the mechanical shutter on the camera is not completely light proof. So when dark fielding the scope end cover should be used to make it light proof. Meade

Recharging the Desiccant.

Meade 216-XT
My fist camera which I brought because it was cheep and I did not want to commit a lot of money until I was sure I was Going to take imaging up seriously. This camera nearly stopped me from ever using a CCD camera again!! It was not so much the camera but the software. It crashed almost constantly which needed a complete re boot of the computer to get anything working again. Most of the things Meade said it could do in the adverts did not work at best and at worst froze the computer necessitating a re boot. It was one of the first cameras they produced so the software was new, but why did they sell it until the software worked properly. After many patches and complete rebuilds downloaded from the web, I never could download anything from their web site as it was so slow and would just stop after say three quarters of the download. In the end I got them for kind people that posted the upgrades on their own web sites) it became more stable as long as us only used it for basic imaging. That is none of the advanced features advertised by Meade that persuaded me to get the camera in the first place. I stopped upgrading at version 6.4 and brought MaxIm DLL CCD which seems to do a good job with the camera although I only use it now if I cannot find a guide star with the ST7. ( I would assume the the software is up to scratch, or at the very leased better, now because it's been some time since I stopped using it.) The other problem I find now with this camera is it's speed. To download a picture can take minuets and this becomes very annoying after a while.