New Sbig Aluma U694 camera

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mbenjaminz28 Canada
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New Sbig Aluma U694 camera

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Post by mbenjaminz28 »


My brand new Sbig Aluma U694/FW8G/AO-8a showed up this morning, beautiful! A little history here, I restarted my interest in Astronomy in 2016 once I moved back to where I grew up, a suitable decent dark site about 38 km outside of Halifax NS. I bought a older LX-200gps off Kijiji and quickly got interested in trying some imaging. I didn't want to spend a large outlay at the beginning so I found a old sbig ST-6 with filter wheel and filters on Astromart for $150. The camera worked great, and I was suitability impressed that something built in 1992 or so worked as it should, so then and there I became a fan of their products..the electronics on the Meade Lx-200 gps not so much. I've owned since then used St-7xme, STT-8300, STl-11000m and a ST-10xme models along with their adaptive optics, AO-8t and AO-l. I only recently tried a CMOS sensor model, a QHY183m that would be an excellent match for my Meade 70mm quad but I gave it a good try but trying to figure out the conundrum of calibration (offset&gain) compared to the outright ease of CCD technology was a nightmare for me. So I bit the bullet and bought this new camera that comes with the very low noise sony ICX-694 chip 4.54um pixel size is a good compromise that will work ok with my shortest length refractor (350mm fl) and my soon to arrive WO flt132 and my Meade 12" (2438mm fl) binning the chip 2x2. The missing luminance filter should arrive later today from Sbig so I haven't yet broke the camera and accessories out of their packaging but here are a few images.
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William optics flt 132, WO 0.72 reducer, Sbig Aluma U694/FW8G/AO-8a, 36mm LRGB 3nm Ha Oiii Sii, Cem120 non ec, Celestron CGX, Meade 12"F8 ota, Meade 70mm astrograph, Meade 6sn, TSflat2
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yobbo89 Australia
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Re: New Sbig Aluma U694 camera

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Post by yobbo89 »


Very nice, can't wait to see your images, I've always wanted to try a ccd but have been deterrent because of the extra noise over a cmos, but certainly has thier pros, bigger pixels which is handy for longer fl scopes and binning.
scopes :gso/bintel f4 12"truss tube, bresser messier ar127s /skywatcher 10'' dob,meade 12'' f10 lx200 sct
cameras : asi 1600mm-c/asi1600mm-c,asi120mc,prostar lp guidecam, nikkon d60, sony a7,asi 290 mm
mounts : eq6 pro/eq8/mesu 200 v2
filters : 2'' astronomik lp/badder lrgb h-a,sII,oIII,h-b,Baader Solar Continuum, chroma 3nm ha,sii,oiii,nii,rgb,lowglow,uv/ir,Thousand Oaks Solar Filter,1.25'' #47 violet,pro planet 742 ir,pro planet 807 ir,pro planet 642 bp ir.
extras : skywatcher f4 aplanatic cc, Baader MPCC MKIII Coma Corrector,Orion Field Flattener,zwo 1.25''adc.starlight maxi 2" 9x filter wheel,tele vue 2x barlow .

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mbenjaminz28 Canada
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Re: New Sbig Aluma U694 camera

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Post by mbenjaminz28 »


I am sitting here getting some dark masters done with the camera and while I knew the Sony icx694 chip was clean, I can hardly believe how clean it is especially compared to the Kodak/interline chips I was using. It's 99% as clean as the CMOS chip in the QHY183M I had. That being said I never had too much issue with the extra hot pixels in my older Sbig cameras, as long as you take at least 15 subs per filter and dither between them, Pixinsight would do its magic and take care of 95% of the hot pixels, then clone stamp would take care of the rest.
Cost is the biggest deterrent I think these Sony chips are just plain expensive!!
William optics flt 132, WO 0.72 reducer, Sbig Aluma U694/FW8G/AO-8a, 36mm LRGB 3nm Ha Oiii Sii, Cem120 non ec, Celestron CGX, Meade 12"F8 ota, Meade 70mm astrograph, Meade 6sn, TSflat2
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