Ignore the publication date. This post was written around July 20th, 2018 but only published 8/8/18. I'll try for brevity.
The ASI174MC-COOL camera that replaced my mothballed but still working Meade DSI Color died TWICE under warranty. I suspect this was due to the camera drawing too much current and overheating while acquiring dark images for later use. When it worked the camera was productive and enjoyable to use despite its high amplifier glow. High Point Scientific was classy enough to issue me a credit for the full camera price after the second failure. Thank you HPS.
I used the credit, plus an additional $311 to procure the popular ASI294MC-Pro. I've only had it a couple days but so far am impressed. I was inspired to get the 294 by the awesome Astrobin images taken by Robin Clark with herv14" Celestron Edge SCT with a 0.67x focal reducer. Although her imager is an ASI1600MC-Pro its pixels are a bit smaller suggesting the ASI294MC-Pro is a bit more sensitive.
I use an 8" Celestron SCT also with a 0.67x. Suggesting the 294MC Pro would be a good match. To my delight on my second night out with the new camera I was able to get this M-13 image, though sadly marred by a dust speck ring.
Update: I was not using flat frames at the time of this writing.
The image is also noisy as I was running at high gain and with short (8s) exposures and dark frames only averaged from five sub-frames.
