Mike,

Another poster seemed to imply that I would have reduced sensitivity
using guiding on the MX vs the SBIG 7, but being new to this I might
have misunderstood(?). The price of the MX though is certainly more
managable.

This question was already answered by others. Of course you could use a
separate autoguider (as I do) to avoid the halved sensitivity when
selfguiding with the STAR2000 box, which often will still be cheaper than
buying a ST7. Even quite a lot of people that use SBIG cameras use a
separate autoguider because the integrated guidechip doesn't always see good
guidestars when imaging through narrow filters.


I would very much
recommend a mono camera because of it's much higher sensitivity.
If you are interested in some MX716 pictures taken through an 8" LX200
you could take a look at my website at www.ccd-astronomy.de

Those look great to me! In your captions you state 8" at f/6.3,
is that the normal for your scope or are you using a focal reducer?
I've read that f/3ish would be ideal for this size ccd, but my
scope is native 6.3. Using a reducer would give me 4 or 2. Do you
feel its needed to a) use one and b) which choice woould be better?


My scope is also a native f/6.3. I do own f/6.3 and f/3.3 reducers (which
bring the scope to f/4 and f/1.9) to accomodate the field of view to larger
objects. The f/3.3 reducer doesn't have sharp stars at the edge of the field
with the "fast" f/6.3 scopes, still it is nice to have such a wide field. I
would still recommend the f/6.3 reducer though, which should give a nice
scale at your 10 incher. If you are just starting imaging it will save you a
lot of frustration to use the reducer as it makes guiding much less
forgiving and allows for shorter exposure times (the added light sensitivity
of f/4 against f/6.3 is very obvious).

Stefan