Auto-Guider / Planet Camera

I am putting together a new system from the ground up. I am looking at both the new SBI Auto-guider/Planet Camera and the Starlight Express Lodestar. I am hoping to get some opinions on these two products.

Also, I know the advantage of a mono ccd for going deep in the sky, but what wouild be the advantage of a mono camera over a color camera for auto-guiding and planetary work? SBIG offers color or mono at the same price.

Thanks in advance for any comments

Color is convenient for imaging, since there are no filters to change. Mono will give higher resolution for both guiding and imaging (when used with color filters). The mono camera + filters will give the full resolution of the detector, but a color camera effectively has 3 times fewer pixels per color channel. For example, a 640x480 mono camera has 3 Megapixels, but a 640x480 color camera effectively has 1 Megapixel of resolution in each color channel.

Another key pareameter for planet imaging is the maximum frame rate at full resolution. The SBI Planet Camera only does 21 frames per second, which is pretty slow. The Staright Express Lodestar looks like 5 frames per second. I think the Lumenera SKYnyx 2-0 at 67 frames per second would be a much better choice for planet imaging.

Russell Sipe said:

I am putting together a new system from the ground up. I am looking at both the new SBI Auto-guider/Planet Camera and the Starlight Express Lodestar. I am hoping to get some opinions on these two products.

Also, I know the advantage of a mono ccd for going deep in the sky, but what wouild be the advantage of a mono camera over a color camera for auto-guiding and planetary work? SBIG offers color or mono at the same price.

Thanks in advance for any comments

I have no doubt it will be a fine autoguider. Planetary camera? I will have to be convinced by results, which I haven't seen yet. SBIG's wide field and fairly low resolution Moon pictures ain't showing me much.