Posted inAstronomy CCD Cameras & Autoguiders

A fond farewell to the SBIG ST-8300M CCD Camera

After 10 years with my SBIG ST-8300M, I have finally upgraded. Despite its quirks, halos and spikes around bright stars, bad columns, and incredibly slow download times, this camera has performed admirably well. It has taken some of my best astrophotos to date, and managing its idiosyncrasies has taught me more about image processing than I ever thought I would know. In the time I have had it, this camera has taken on dripping humid winter nights, wonky power at remote sites, suspect USB cables, being dropped, and has just kept going. So, before I move on, I wanted to take a moment to celebrate this aging, but still very capable camera with a teardown and a close look at its innards.

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Posted inAstronomy CCD Cameras & Autoguiders

StarlightXpress MX7C to MX716 Conversion


Shortly after I bought my MX7C I read that the hardware in the MX5C and MX516 were the same, and all that needed to be substituted was the CCD chip. I contacted Terry Platt of StarlightXpress and asked if this was the same for the MX7C line of cameras. Happily he confirmed that this was the correct, and I put in an order for a Sony ICX249AL CCD chip directly to StarlightXpress.

Now why bother with a mono chip? Why the heck did I buy a color camera in the 1st place? Well, the convenience of 1 shot color is still a huge plus for me but the possibility of having a mono chip capable of taking more sensitive luminance images to combine with the color data was intriguing. Not having to buy another camera to be able to do this was what sold me on the idea…

Posted inAstronomy CCD Cameras & Autoguiders

CCD Cookbook CB245 Autoguider

This is page will hopefully help some out there build the CCD Cookbook based autoguider circuit and provide some background on how to connect one to an LX50.

April 13, 2003, update: Due to, among other things, time constraints and a brand-spanking-new MX7C, this autoguider is pretty much an abandoned project. Which isn’t to say that I won’t give folks a hand if they need it. I have some goodies that may be of help or at least a starting point for this project.

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Posted inAstronomy Software

Win245 CCD CookBook Camera Software by Tybee Evans

Win245 is by far the best image acquisition software available for Richard Berry’s CCD Cookbook based CB245 camera. The intuitive Windows interface makes taking a sequence of images, taking dark and bias frames very easy. The “Find” function is super helpful for framing and focusing, and it also allows taking sub-1 second integrations for brighter targets for planetary and lunar imaging. Also included are functions to average and manage dark frames.


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Posted inAstronomy CCD Cameras & Autoguiders

Centering the CCD Cookbook CB245 CCD chip

The very first thing I noticed after the first night imaging with my CB245 was how badly I had centered the CCD and the cold finger. Objects I wanted to image were not only completely out of the FOV of my illuminated 9mm reticle, but also almost out of the FOV on my 26mm Plössl! Finding my targets was just a ludicrous waste of time.

After asking around on the CCD list and realizing that nobody had any tips on an easy way to do this, I decided to start rubbing my 2 remaining neurons together to see if I could maybe get a spark.

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