Peltier-cooled Canon - second light

[MarkS]

Here is one of my 10 minute subs taken at Riberac.

I don't know exactly what went wrong, but I suspect that moisture condensed on the CCD window and froze.  It happened immediately after I opened the sealed bag to change the battery.



Mark

[JohnP]

ummm bummer.... Did you get any good subs? Has the camera worked since?

John

[Tony G]

 

I AIN'T MODDING MINE NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tony G

PS.................Only joking Mark. Hope everythings OK.

[mickw]

Standard batery is only 720mah, how about higher capacity battery - 2000mah ?
http://www.batterymill.com/shop/DIGITALCAMERAS/CANON/5649

[Rocket Pooch]

blimey

[MarkS]

Here's the first light from my second Canon 350D. 

No this is not a new nebula - it was caused by dew forming on the CCD cover glass - the cooling was down to 21C below freezing - ambient air temperature 7C.

It's very red because I was using a clip-in Ha filter.  I couldn't see any stars through the viewfinder so I had to open the camera out in the garden to remove it for alignment purposes.  Although the peltier was not yet switched on it allowed damp air to enter. Clearly, I will need to perform all alignment with the finderscope in future.



There's a definite pattern forming here - whenever I've opened up the camera "in the field" it has caused misting.  All other experiments have been fine. 

Here's a question: why doesn't the cover glass on a dedicated astro-CCD suffer similar misting problems?

Anyway, I managed to get a later version of Nebulosity connected to PhDGuiding to give me dithering.  According to the release notes, the version I was previously using had a bug which prevented the dithering.

Mark

[Mike]

Here's a question: why doesn't the cover glass on a dedicated astro-CCD suffer similar misting problems?

It does from time to time. I've had one or two occasions when a small patch of moisture has formed over the CCD. Strangely it only forms directly over the point of the CCD and nowhere else. I think on all occasions it is where some moisture was already inside the camera (camera put into case on a dewy night and small amount of water inside the case).