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c/astronomy-photos•rose_reedrose_reed•17d ago

My astro camera shutter count hit 10,000 last night

Was cleaning my ZWO camera and checked the logs. 10,003 actuations. All from my backyard in Tucson over two years. That's a lot of failed shots of Orion and a few good ones of the Ring Nebula. Makes me think about gear wear and tear. How many shots do you guys usually get out of a dedicated astro cam before worrying?
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reed.skyler
reed.skyler17d agoMost Upvoted
Shutter count is one thing, but I wonder about sensor heat cycles. All those Tucson summer nights cooking the chip, then cooling it down. Might degrade the sensor before the shutter gives out. My old DSLR got weird hot pixels after a few hundred long exposures in warm weather. The logs don't track that kind of wear.
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olivia_moore
Sounds like a stretch to me.
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knight.felix
knight.felix17d agoMost Upvoted
It's like anything with moving parts... my car's odometer is just a number, but the real wear comes from cold starts and short trips. Olivia_moore might think it's a stretch, but those heat cycles reed.skyler mentioned are the real killer. My old camera's shutter was fine, but the sensor got noisy from all the on-and-off cooling.
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