At this years Texas Star Party, I sat up with my friends from Sky-Watcher USA as always, and also Michael Hattey from Starlight Xpress was there. Michael brought me a present too, an updated control board for one of my favorite cameras, the Trius 694. The new control board turned my Trius into a “Trius Pro”, which meant another reduction of read noise, by 1/2, and an almost doubling of the download speed. What’s not to like? The seeing at TSP was a bit soft (using an Esprit 120), so I shot binned 2×2, and this image is only two hours of two minute exposures through RGB filters. There’s a little blooming on the saturated stars (elongation due to electron’s leaking into neighboring pixel cells), and this was tuned out afterwards (electronics upgrades need a little tweaking too). I plan to shoot this again at the Grand Canyon Star Party next month, so stay tuned and see what the camera can do at full quality!
