[Aavso-photometry] DSI Pro2

[Keith Robinson]

Hi All and warm greetings from Lancaster U.K.

My wife and I bought a DSI Pro 2 last year from someone who was selling them on Ebay - we paid 400 U.K. pounds (about 800 dollars) for the camera plus RGB filter set. My wife who is Secretary of of our local astronomy club wanted to do the pretty picture thing while I want to do photometry. So I also bought a Schuler V filter.

I've found by doing trial exposrues on open clisters - eg M34 that I can easily reach mag16 with a few stakced 15 second exposures and overall my wife and I are very well pleased with it.

I would like  buy a B and an R filter, however a local amateur astronomer friend would does some photometry with an SBig camera  fairly winced at the mention of using a B filter and reckoned that exposures would need to be very long to get to decently low mags. I see that Arne Hendon in his article mentions the camera's excellent blue response - does aynone have experience as to what mags can be reached with a B filter and realistic exposures? I'm using the camera with an 8inch f6 Newtonian by the way.

A final 'by the way' is that with a bit of cardboard engineering and some brown parcel tape, I made a couple of covers which slide over the exposed filters  and certainly eliminate dewing problems.

Many thanks and clear skies - we aint had many of those here in the U.K. lately.

Keith Robinson