ASI294MC vs 294MC-Pro ASI183MC Selection Help Needed

O6jj6geV

I have the ASI662MC camera and the Celestron C6" OTA on the AVX Mount. I have 40 yrs experience in DSLR photography which isn't helping me much in the cross over to Astro Photography. I'm a newbe (3 months into this hobby) and need help. Deep Sky doesn't interest me yet but I may get there some day. So far my targets the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn; also my neighbor's Chimley Stack 🙂 .

I'm comparing the ASI294MC vs 294MC-Pro vs the ASI183MC. My DSLR experience tells me I want a BIG sensor with Small Pixels. That may or may not be correct thinking for photographing Planets and the Moon; but I don't know;
neither of the cameras I'm looking at may be right for my intentions, They all are listed in the ZWO planetary camera section; which is why I chose them. I like the 294MC-Pro mainly because it will use a Nikon T2-Adapter for Nikon Lenses; I don't see that adapter offered for the 294MC; only offered for the Pro. Not a deal breaker though.
I believe Cooling is required when taking long exposures but Jupiter and the Moon don't usually require long exposures. I'm also leaning toward the ASI183MC but the Moon just barley fits into the 183MC's FOV with the Celestron .63x Focal Corrector/Reducer on my C6"Telescope, so I'm nervous the Astronomy.tools FOV calculator may not be inaccurate enough to be a guarantee I can capture the moon's full disk.

Any 'valid' advise and suggestions welcomed and very much appreciated.

Mike

Kevin_A

If it is a toss up between the 294 then go cooled. If you get the uncooled then you can not do DSO exposures over 30-60s without lots of noise. The cooled version is future proofing yourself and you can run uncooled for your planetary. The Nikon adapter should work on any M42 thread so not sure why the uncooled would not work. I use the new Nikon adapter/ filter drawer and it works on all my cameras. The 183mc pro is a good camera but with small pixels it will require better guiding and for DSO targets of longer exposure it will definitely test your mounts capability to do sub arc second guiding. It is also only 12bit so you will need more total integration time to recover dynamic range and it comes with lots of amp glow… but that calibrates out nicely using dark flats not bias. Why not a 533… it is 14bit and 3.76uM pixels with zero amp glow. It is a smaller sensor in size and if your budget permits… get the best… a 2600! I also only bought the bigger 2” filters when starting out to future proof in case I wanted to buy a bigger sensor camera in the future…. The 294mc pro is better than uncooled in the long run but… do your research and figure out what suits your needs vs newer technologies of newer sensors.