Starlight Xpress SXVR-H814 - Manual (Page 2)

Handbook for the SXVR-H814 Issue 1 February 2013
2
75% in yellow light, and an extremely low dark current, well below that of any
comparable CCD currently available. While this device also has an excellent blue
light sensitivity, it has a strong infra-red response, which makes it ideal for all aspects
of both planetary and deep-sky imaging, especially with an H-alpha filter. The H-
alpha QE is about 63%, considerably better than other interline chips and even greater
than the popular KAF8300 CCD.
The full-frame download time is approximately 6 seconds and a binned 4x4 download
takes only 1 seconds, so finding and centring are very quick and easy in this mode.
Please take a few minutes to study the contents of this manual, which will help you to
get the camera into operation quickly and without problems. I am sure that you want
to see some results as soon as possible, so please move on to the ‘Quick Start’ section,
which follows. A more detailed description of imaging techniques will be found in a
later part of this manual.
‘Quick Starting’ your SXVR-H814 system
In the shipping container you will find the following items:
1) The SXVR-H814 camera head.
2) A universal AC power supply module.
3) A USB camera cable.
4) An adaptor for 1.25” drawtubes, with a 1.25” filter thread.
5) An adaptor for 2” drawtubes and M42 Pentax thread lenses.
6) A guider output to guider port lead.
7) A disk with the SXVR-H814 control software and this manual.
Optional extra items include:
1) A serial port adaptor and cable.
2) An add-on guide camera head.
You will also need a PC computer with Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 or Windows
8 installed. This machine must have at least one USB 2.0 port available and at least
256 Mbytes of memory. If you intend to view the finished images on its screen, then
you will also need a graphics card capable of displaying an image with a minimum of
1024 x 768 pixels and 24 bit colour. A medium specification Pentium with between
1GHz and 4GHz processor speed is ideal, but I recommend avoiding some of the
lower specification ‘Netbook’ computers, as they can’t really handle the fast data
stream from the camera. Please note that USB 2.0 operates at a very high speed and
cannot operate over very long cables. Five metres of good quality cable is the
maximum normally possible without boosters or extra powered hubs, although you
can sometimes get good results at longer distances with very high quality cables.