Selecting a camera

[NiganKhan]

Hello everyone,,
A table that compares the technical capabilities (and prices) of Atik cameras would be useful - does it exist?

Trying to work from first principles:

I want a camera whose pixel size matches or lies below the diameter of the Airy disk at the focal plane.   This diameter by convention is 1.22 x wavelength x f-number, so for 550nm light and and f10 lens, this would be 6.7 microns.   For an f4 lens/mirror then we'd need <= 3.3 microns (bigger aperture, sharper picture, yes?).

Then I want a sensor big enough to accept the size of the image I wish to shoot, which is the angular diameter of the celestial object (just a number, no arc-seconds, please) x the focal length of the lens/mirror.   So for the moon (angular size about 1/111) and a 750 mm focal length lens, we have an image size of 750 mm/111 = 6.76 mm.

So, now I have my desired resolution and size - where's that table?!!

[petevasey]

Hi,

I prefer to base resolution on objective diameter rather than f-ratio which can be misleading.  You might find this link useful:
https://astronomy.tools/calculators/telescope_capabilities  Of course these theoretical values are only a guide - it's very rare that atmospheric seeing will allow ground based optics to reach their full potential.

I have a (free) program on my web page into which you can put a variety of optics and sensors.  You might find that useful as well.  It's here: http://www.madpc.co.uk/~peterv/astroplover/equipnbits/Astrofot.zip

Cheers,

Peter