Best mono deep space camera for a SC8 f/10, under US$ 1200?

[Jairo]

I thought about the Orion StarShooter V2.0, but I don't know if its 25 mm chip will be wasted in vignetting. As a cheaper option, I also thought about the Orion G3.

I already have LRGB filters and a planetary camera for autoguiding.

Do you have any advice?

Thank, you.

[RickJ]

I don't know either. Looking up the Starshooter V2 I found only color. III was the mono camera I found and quite different and pretty good match.

G3 has poor cooling. Don't know your climate, if imaging in 25C weather it's not enough. Field with a 6.3 corrector would be only about 17' wide at about 1.4" per pixel. Pixels aren't square which can be compensated for, just adds an extra step to processing. Probably would work without the corrector for 0.7" per pixel and 40% the field of view (darned small). Doubt that's a good option.

The Starshooter III is higher cost but a lot better match. Much greater cooling but unfortunately not regulated that I saw in the specs. This means you'll likely not use darks but use a bad pixel map instead unless imaging in very warm conditions. Then you might need to try to match the darks to the lights, hard without regulated cooling but this chip has low enough dark current a miss of a couple C isn't serious. With a 6.3 corrector your field of view will be about 24 minutes wide so considerably larger with higher resolution of 1.05" per pixel. Unlike the color V2 camera this one would not have serious vignetting issues with the corrector/compressor.

No one I know uses either so I can't comment much. I've seen in forums some complaining about Orion's provided imaging software. Most use Nebulosity instead and PHD for guiding. Both are quite capable and inexpensive. I suppose you can try theirs and if it doesn't work for you move to Nebulosity.

Rick