ASI294MC

The ASI294MC Pro was the first dedicated astrophotography camera I purchased primarily because it was a One Shot Color (OSC) camera which simplifies image acquisition and processing. I purchased this with the RASA 8 and it did wonderful in the dark skies of Culebra.

With the simplicity of OSC cameras you do lose out in resolution when compared to Mono Cameras. This is because if you think of the image chip divided into a grid then of a 4 pixel cluster one has a red filter, one has a blue filter and two have a green filter. Where as with a mono camera all pixels are the same and the filtering is done with a filter wheel or filter slider.

I still use this camera but only really in dark sky locations or to support Electrinicly Assisted Astronomy (EAA) where you aren't really going for a high quality image but use Live Stacking software to do many exposures and watch the nebulocity come in and then move to another target. It's kind of like visual Astronomy but with an upgraded camera from the Mark 1 eyeball which is the worlds worst nighttime camera.