Visual amateur off and on over many years, and I am moving to doing some DSO/widefield astrophotography with a DSLR plus Sharpstar EDPH II (on the way). I have a Star Adventurer and both a Fuji X-T1 and Canon 40D camera. I am strongly considering getting the ASIAir Pro package for autoguiding and polar alignment.
My questions are about the ASIAir and the X-T1. The Fujifilm X-T1 has a proprietary interface and can't be driven/accessed without using the Fuji software. So, it can't be used for polar alignment, plate solving, stacking, etc. However, it has a lot of advantages over the Canon 40D - invariant ISO noise, 6400 vs. 1600 ISO, sensitivity to Ha, sensor size, size of image.
Questions:
- Can I do polar alignment with plate solving using the guide scope alone?
- Is the through the camera plate solving/stacking so valuable that I should use the Canon 40D for imaging instead of the Fuji?
- Anything else I should be thinking about?
I know, eventually I will think about a cooled, dedicated camera, but not yet.
Thanks in advance.
