Star tracking with ASI662-MC camera

I got the chance to try out my newly acquired ASI 662-MC camera for guiding today in the small hours of the morning! First of, the image is so much larger and cleaner than with the Atik 16-IC. I wish I had taken a screenshot of the Atik 16-IC guide image window for comparison, but I never did.

It’s also pretty sensitive compared to the old Atik camera. Despite the cleaner image, Maxim DL struggled with calibration. Even though the star was bright, it picked it up on the first frame but failed to see it in the subsequent 3 calibration frames. I tried to increased exposure time to no avail and ended up binning the pixels by 2. With binned pixels, it calibrated with no issues. This is strange indeed. I always wondered how Maxim was coping with the “dirty” Atik 16 images and I’m surprised it has problem with cleaner images.

I use a 15 years old version of Maxim DL so maybe the algorithm is designed to operate with smaller, noisier images. Who knows? Anyhow, you’ll find a video I made of the procedure below, it’s worth a 1000 words. Happy viewing.