| The SBIG CFW-9 color filter wheel for tri-color CCD imaging mounts on the front of current USB-version SBIG ST-7, 8, 9, 10, or 2000 CCD cameras. A cable on the CFW-9 connects to the camera through the camera’s I2C-AUX port. The CFW-9 is powered and controlled by the CCD camera through this cable. You cannot use the CFW-9 with earlier parallel port SBIG cameras. The filter wheel has five filter positions for standard thread 1.25" filters. Four removable 1.25" filters are supplied – red, green, blue, and clear. The clear filter allows you to focus the camera more quickly by using a brighter full spectrum black and white image, rather than having to use a fainter image through a color filter. Putting any filter in the light path changes the focus slightly, so you cannot focus using an empty filter slot, as the separate tri-color images would all be slightly out of focus. Focusing through the clear filter eliminates this problem. The fifth filter slot is open so you can use your own filter, such as a Hydrogen-Alpha light pollution filter or a specialized narrow passband Oxygen III or Sulfur II filter. The supplied SBIG RGB filters block Infrared (IR), so a separate inline IR Blocking filter is no longer required. The SBIG filters are mounted in standard size cells that normally fit into 1.25" eyepiece barrels. A version of the CFW-9 without filters (#CFW9NF) is available at a substantially lower price if you already have your own 1.25" imaging filters from other manufacturers.
Tricolor images are taken through the CFW-9 color filter wheel and processed with SBIG’s CCDOPS or CCDSoftV5 software (supplied with the camera), or any of a number of other software packages (such as Maxim DL, etc.) The primary color images are taken through the red, green, and blue filters after focusing through the clear filter. After the images are taken they are processed with the software to co-align the red, green, and blue images. The co-aligned image is then color balanced on the computer monitor to become a tricolor RGB image, which can then be saved to disk. CCDOPS software also allows the user to perform image processing functions such as smoothing and sharpening as well as saving images in TIFF format. The CFW-9 system is designed to be “direct connected" to the Models ST-7/8/9/10/2000 imaging cameras for a thinner, more rigid mounting. An optional male-to-male T-thread adapter (#MMTC) is also available allowing easier (but less rigid) attachment and detachment for occasional imaging use. A variety of optional T-thread accessories are available for the front end of the CFW-9, including 1.25" and 2" diameter nosepieces, as well as a “Visual Back Adaptor" (#TVB) for direct connection to an SCT’s rear cell. The CFW-9 is operated through the CCDOPS software and utilizes a closed loop stepper motor system with positional accuracy of ±0.01 inches. The CFW-9 adds approximately 1" of back focus.
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