dark current noise

Astrotripper wrote:

alexisgreat wrote:

Wow this is a lot of work you did, I took pictures of your pictures and printed them out to make a guide for myself to follow. Are there major advantages to using a small body for astrophotography with a telescope?

Less chance of flexing. And in general, less annoying operation. I've been attaching a DSLR to my telescope as well, and a switch to smaller and lighter Olympus body was a welcomed change for me.

Thanks, this will be my main use so I think I should stick to the ligher camera. My CCD imager weighed 11 oz and I was fine with that, the E-PL6 weighs 11.5oz so just about the same. The EM-5 weighs 15 oz, while it doesn't sound like a huge difference, on a single armed Nexstar 8 SE mount that can make a different, dont you think?

I'm also considering getting one of the larger "EM" bodies (possibly the EM-5 Mk 1) because it is weatherproof

Once you attach that camera to a telescope, the weather proofing goes out the window. The body itself will still be, so you don't have to worry as much, but the connection with the scope won't and having water seep through the mount is the last thing you want. And depending on your telescope type, you may have the sensor exposed directly to the elements. So no, weather sealed camera is not a get-out-of-jail card when major dew hits you.

I have dew strips and a dew heater for everything from my 8" telescope to 60mm refractor to 1.25" eyepieces. Can I use the dew heater and dew strips on the camera-lens combo when it is not attached to the telescope in lieu of getting a weatherproof body? Hopefully that would work.

and can use an ac adapter as an alternate power source

That's nice, I was not aware of that possibility. But you could still make your own solution for that problem, as described here by another forum member.

Excellent, so there's a solution to making an alternate power source for the E-PL series of cameras?

and was wondering whether being weatherproof and a larger body is a benefit or a detriment for AP?

The larger the body, the more problems you'll potentially face with flexing and balancing. Using a cheap and small E-PL6 to get into astrophotography is fine. However, investing in more expensive, high-end Micro 4/3 camera for that purpose makes no sense whatsoever.

I also have heated dew strips if dew becomes an issue, not sure if dew is a good reason to get a weather resistant body or lens. I use UV protectors on my lenses.

Now, if you would like to do wide field astrophotography without a telescope, just with a lens, then a weather sealed camera and lens can be a big deal.

Wide starfield astrophotography is a major interest for me, but I'm wondering if using dew heaters and heated dew strips can make getting a weather sealed body or lens unnecessary.

I wrote this in another thread regarding high ISO/long exposure noise but your idea of making an alternate power source got me thinking......When will major camera manufacturers wake up and offer at least optional TEC cooling for all non-point and shoot cameras? It is simply done and will cause a major reduction in noise.  Maybe we can make it ourselves and provide cooling for our cameras to reduce noise even further (especially at higher temps- I am specifically thinking of imaging in the summer when it is in the 70s here all night.)