This item has been discontinued.

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Our customers have been invaluable sources of inspiration and direction. It was in direct response to customer inquiries that we developed the ST-2000XM. Now those who wanted something bigger and better but at a lower price than the ST-8 or ST-10 have got what they asked for. The ST-2000XM has been developed to meet the needs of the astro-imager looking for:

• A relatively large CCD with a generous field of view - nearly the same size as the ST-8XME
• More than a million pixels - nearly two megapixels
• Good sensitivity
• Low noise
• Antiblooming protection - good for small refractors
• High resolution on smaller telescopes with 7.4 micron square pixels
• Flexibility of binning 2x2 on larger scopes with good image size
• Self-guiding with a built-in TC-237H CCD
• Remote Guide Head Port
• High speed download - about 4.5 seconds for a full 1.9 megapixel image
• Professional software - see below
• Easy to use
• Full compliment of optional custom accessories
• Lower price
• SBIG quality and support

The ST-2000XM and ST-2000XMI cameras are the same, except that the ST-2000XMI does not include the built-in TC-237H tracking CCD and some of the accessories that are included with the ST-2000XM. In March of 2006 we also added the Remote Guide Head Port to both the single sensor ST-2000XMI and dual sensor ST-2000XM cameras. Both versions use the same high quality interline CCD from Kodak, the KODAK DIGITAL SCIENCE™ KAI-2020M Image Sensor Megapixel Progressive Scan Interline CCD. The KODAK DIGITAL SCIENCETM KAI-2020M is a high-performance multi-megapixel image sensor designed for a wide range of scientific, medical imaging, and machine vision applications. The 7.4 mm square pixels with microlenses provide high sensitivity and the large full well capacity results in high dynamic range. The vertical overflow drain structure provides antiblooming protection, and enables electronic shuttering for precise exposure control to 0.001 seconds. Other features include low dark current, negligible lag and low smear. The KAI-2020M CCD is a 2 megapixel progressive scan detector with an active image area of 1.92 million pixels. The active image area is 1600 x 1200 pixels. This array is 75% larger than the Sony CCD used in competitors' "megapixel" cameras, nearly as large as an ST-8XME, and the ST-2000XM is a self-guiding camera, utilizing SBIG's patented dual sensor design. Although the imaging CCD is nearly the same size as the KAF-1603ME used in the ST-8XME, due to the smaller pixel size it contains nearly half a million more pixels than the ST-8XME.

The latest KAI-2020M 2 megapixel CCD retains the improved QE of the KAI-2001M and adds a high gain output amplifier that reduces the read noise by almost half compared to the previous CCD. In addition to lower read noise, the bright points have been reduced by a factor of ~10X and our tests show the typical dark current is also reduced by approximately 2Xcompared to the previous versions of the CCD. These same improvements are also found in the single shot color version of the CCD used in the ST-2000XCM color camera as of July, 2004 (All ST-2000 monochrome and color cameras beginning with serial number 20407000 or higher). Previously, Kodak improved the Quantum Efficiency of the