Camera fan vibration (William Maxwell)

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Camera fan vibration

For those with cooled cameras:

To make a LONG story short, once I fine tuned my SCT spacing giving me a much finer focus, I started seeing almost double stars (right side of image). After a LONG thread and some great detective work on Cloudy Nights, it was..... The camera cooling fan! A resonant vibration was causing the distortion. Fan off (left), beautiful pinpoint stars.

The solution? Spacers to isolate the fan and/or replacing the fan completely. Check on Cloudy Nights for various options. The problem seems to be more common that I would have thought, especially as the focal length goes up.

BTW, the left and right panels are the same scale and the frame here is minimally cropped (about a 1/3 off each side), so the distortion is rather obvious. Tip offs: Its across the whole field evenly and remains the same regardless of exposure. It appears in your imaging camera AND your OAG.

Even if its not this obvious, I do wonder how much impact these fans are having for most people. Mine had no obvious malfunction. It wasn't like the camera was buzzing.

Cloudy Nights

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