Scott Baker wrote:
> 3) I noticed an ad in Sky & Telescope for MaxIm DL/CCD software,
which
> claims to support the 416XT (in serial mode only). Has anyone tried this
> software? Does the CCD control function better than PictorView?

yes, yes, though it does not have some of PictorView's advanced
features like auto-focus and auto-mosaic.

MaxIm DL/CCD's 416 camera controller is rock solid. I have never had
to re-boot the camera... never... when using Maxim DL/CCD. I have
never had a crash/GPF. I have never had it "get lost" and had to
re-connect to the camera. I have had 100% success with the temperature
readout and control, exposure times are right on. The display is much
better auto-scaled (no horrible looking salt and pepper look on
just-input images), the focusing mode is brilliant (you get a 3-D
contour plot of the star, and full-width, half-max readouts for X and
Y as well as the brightness), download times are as fast or faster
than PV (I believe it really works at 115K and I suspect PV does not),
etc.

Given that you will want to do image processing on your images anyway,
and MaxIm DL is great for that (Maximum Entropy is great), I feel it's
well worth the price (almost $400). But then I appreciate well-done
software -- I'm not one of those "Oh it's trivial, I would write it in
a weekend" type of guys :-) :-)

-- Bob

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