Wednesday, February 11, 2015

First light with MCX

Last night was my first opportunity to use my new MCX camera. Setup was pretty easy and I slewed the scope to see how the cam would work with the Orion Nebula. Here's the result of a 3-second integration:

 
The image was well-resolved, but completely lacking in red--the dominant color in this nebula. I tried to adjust using the Miloslick software, but to no avail. I then selected Miloslick's reset option for the camera and normal color was restored. I got a tantalizing glimpse of the nebula in its full-color glory before the clouds rolled in. Unfortunately, I was not able to get an image. 

I reprocessed one to the green images in monochrome, and it shows a lot of subtle detail. The mild cooling of the MCX peltier worked well and noise was considerably reduced. All in all, I'm very pleased with this camera.


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