I have ordered another Starlight Xpress M26C one-shot colour CCD – this time for the Hyperstar III. Up until now I have been using the M25C on the Hyperstar III – a 6-Megapixel OSC giving me a 2.4 x 1.6 degree field of view at 2.85 arc seconds per pixel sampling. As I have managed to get the collimation pretty much sorted on the Hyperstar III it has been clear for quite a while now that I could push the system a bit further on the camera side. The M26C OSC will give me the same field of view but the resolution goes up to 10-Megapixels (how nice is that!) and the sampling goes up too to 2.1 arc seconds per pixel. I think this scope/CCD combination is pretty much spot on for the work I want to carry out at the New Forest Observatory 🙂
With the two M26C cameras on the mini-WASP system, the NFO now has three M26C cameras to work with (and an M25C).