I bought a 120mc as a birthday gift for myself in May, intending mostly to autoguide with it. But for a variety of reasons (including the heaviest Arizona monsoons in many years), I've had no opportunity to try it out. Now that our skies have cleared for just a couple of nights, I'm wondering whether I got one that's not working right, or whether what I'm observing is normal behavior.
Mounted on a telescope, and using PHD, I don't seem to be able to see any star beyond about magnitude 1.7. I've read many posts here and elsewhere to figure out settings, and I'm able to get sharp views of really bright stars, like Vega, Deneb and Capella, but the image seems to be jumping around a lot.
So I hooked the camera up to a 200mm telephoto lens (using a C-mount adapter) and tried some daylight use. With resolution set at 640x480, I get a focus-able image of a distant mountain, but every few seconds, I get a second image, with one overlayed at what appears to higher resolution on the top part of the main image. Also, now that I'm using it in daylight, I notice a distinct lack of color in the image. The mountain in question is very green from all our summer rain, but is just black and white on screen. I'm so new to that that I don't even know whether I'm supposed to see color in the PHD display, but can anyone tell me whether what I'm experiencing is normal for this camera? Here is an example of the overlayed images, which occur at varying intervals, but no more than about three seconds apart:
