|
| The MX716 is a high-quality, monochrome camera with a resolution of 752 by 582 pixels. I have the USB version. It is fitted at the front with a female M42 thread and all its electrical connections come in at a 15-pin D-type connector via a horrible, stiff cable too long to fit conveniently into a case, but short enough that the secondary box has to be mounted on the telescope. A previous owner had fitted this secondary box with Velcro and I use this to attach it to the fork arm of my LX200. Two cables come from this secondary box, one of which is shown in the picture and connects to a power-supply unit which can either be powered from the mains supply or from a 12-volt battery. I use the latter*. The second cable is a standard USB cable and connects to the box with a standard connector. Download time for a complete image is 2 seconds through the USB port. There are four very helpful features of this camera. 1. It can be set to download only a small part of the whole image. This is much quicker and helps enormously with focusing on a star. 2. It has a focus-assist function with can be set on a suitable star and display the maximum brightness and width of the image. The software tracks the star if it should move during focusing. 3. It has built-in auto-tracking which enables automatic tracking of an object to be implemented as long as there is a suitable star in the field. This control is implemented through a serial port and either the serial port of an LX200 or an ST4-compatible connection. (I believe this feature was originally an optional extra, and included a control box and all cables.) 4. The software that comes with it has some powerful processing facilities. The ones I use are: (a) Dark frame subtraction, (b) Setting the background to black, (c) A non-linear stretch which is similar to a high gamma but which, in my view, does a better job of emphasising faint objects. It is adjustable but I normally use the default value of 25 (whatever that means...). |
*Since I built my observatory with mains power laid on I have been running the camera from the mains.
Home Back to Equipment