I'll be interested in how it performs for you. A friend of mine up here
has one. He has a real problem of it frosting over in winter and dewing
over in summer. He keeps heat tape around the nose and stores the
camera in a sealed container of desiccant by day. Problem is the
uncontrolled cooling is often too much. This time of year he doesn't
cool it at all but still frosts over without these measures. This is
the front side of the window not the chamber side. But we run high
humidity by summer due to being around all the lakes. Winter is usually
dry but this winter (his first with the camera) is running 90% and more
nearly every night. It's so high my focuser is freezing up and not
moving smoothly ruining my temperature compensation. Pointed high up it
won't move in at all sometimes, just spins on the ice. Tried to thaw it
with a hair dryer but at -32C the air coming out of it was still below
freezing! Heat gun did work but two hours later the ice was back. This
humidity is very unusual up here. Makes for pretty trees each morning
as they are all covered in hoarfrost when the humidity turns to ice fog
about 2 a.m.

I'm trying to find money for a wide field system and would prefer a
smaller pixel camera for it. So was considering it but after all his
problems may opt for something different. They have a pro model now
with controlled cooling. That may work better here and is still cheaper
than most other one shots. Though after using filters I'm not sure I
would be happy with one shot. Does reduce cost considerably however
with no filter wheel or filters to buy.

Rick


Stefan Lilge wrote:
Beautiful picture Rick. I should image more open clusters, I certainly will
do once I have my one-shot colour QHY8 CCD which will arrive in the next few
weeks.

Stefan

"Rick Johnson" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
ster.com...

King 5 is an open cluster in Perseus. The King catalog of star clusters
is small. There are only 26 members and #3 is missing or a duplicate of
NGC 609, depending on who you wish to believe. Nearly all King clusters
reside in a narrow band about 50 to 60 degrees North declination and are
in the Milky way running from about 23 hours R.A. to 3 hours. So they
are in a rather small area of the sky. It appears King made three
searches for previously unknown clusters as the catalog runs from 0
through 24 hours, then does so again, then does so again. Each time
picking up less obvious clusters. Some may not even be true clusters.
One is actually well below the celestial equator. It must be the
outcast member of the group. Anyway I happened to need something in the
only clear spot on the sky one night and this was the object. Not
needing a lot of exposure time I started to image it. The sky clouded
over then cleared then clouded then cleared. With the poor sky I just
kept imaging and ended up with my normal exposure time but it was
visible only about 20% of the time. The rest of the time I was seeing
nothing but clouds. So this image doesn't go very deep compared to my
normal images but is rather pretty. The cluster is estimated to be
about 6000 light years from us. Distances to such clusters is not
easily measured so this is only a rough estimate. Like all King
clusters it is made up of faint stars so not a cluster to see visually
unless you are using a 20" or larger telescope.

14" LX200R @ f/5, L=4x10', RGB 2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Rick
--
Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".





--
Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".