Astrochonum

I received yesterday our new CCD from Germany : the Sigma2 8300. And as the weather was fine, i used it right away !

Mecanically speaking, that's a nice piece of hardware. Strong aluminium casing, Kevlar type filter wheel and shutter. The color is... quite visible.

Cooling is very effective. The -40° are reach less than 2 minutes and i pushed up to 45°, that's 10° above specs. The counterpart is that current draw is quite high : 2.5A. Noise is ok.

The software that comes with the camera is fine enough, and quite well designed with a scheduler and a focus support. Translation isn't complete with several message that pop up in German. There are some nice featurettes such as the power supply voltage indicator. But i wait for the MaximDL driver !

The shutter goes down to 0,5s only : flats will be tricky with my electroluminescent screen, especially with broadband filter. No vignetting visible at F/4.7 with 1 1/4 filters at least in HA. Focusing is quite difficult given the download time : 5s + integration time. The including feature in the soft helps somewhat.

The sensor is very very clean, comparably with an ICX285. But larger ! Just a few hot pixels, and the hot lines disappear with the cooling. But it is not an easy customer : any optical issue, any approximate guiding will show on the picture ! Not really a beginner's choice.

A "small" image done this night. Two hours on M16 and M17 : no dark, no flat, minimal processing.

As it was the first time i was using the CCD, the mount and the Mak90 for guiding, it could be better. Well, later on !