ASI120MM Astronomy Camera

I received this last year at the Rockland Astronomy Club’s Summer Star Party as a raffle prize. Nice camera, designed as a planetary camera with 1280×960 resolution, small pixels at 3.75μm, compact and light-weight, and best of all, it has an autoguider port.

So…at this year’s Summer Star Party, I finally got it out. Yes, it’s been that kind of year where I didn’t do much astronomy all year. Plugged everything in, started up the process and made sure I’m getting images, time to calibrate the autoguider….no movement. Hmmm, check cables, poke and prod, retry…no movement. After an hour or so of this in the dark, break out the Shoestring Astronomy GPUSB plug it in, calibrate, mount moves and guides just fine.

Do I have a dud? I don’t know yet, but not that I’m back in Brooklyn I had a chance to try again with the same results. The MaximDL Pro 2.54 settings (use Camera Relays) for guiding aren’t doing anything for me with the ASI120MM. I’ve joined the Yahoo Group for the camera and hope to get some idea on what might be going on.