If the uncooled cameras (talking about Zwo only here) were that bad, I mean everyone is banging their drums about cooling....
why is Zwo keeping an uncooled camera line?!?!
I am interested in the 174MM or 183MM for my Nikon lens to be used as widefield.
One possible explanation could be that a cooled camera requires more power which can be problematic with a mobile setup in the field. Another explanation could be that as long as you take proper darks (meaning of the same length shot at the same temperature as the lights) then you can do proper noise reduction. The advantage of a cooled camera is that you can control the temperature and create master darks for the temperature at which you shot the lights during daylight. I am sure there are more reasons for wanting an uncooled camera.
For planetary/lunar/solar imaging cooling doesn't really do anything as frames are so short anyway. Longer the exposures, more dark current accumulates. I have uncooled ASI178MC and cooled Atik 383L+ and although they aren't really apples to apples in any way, the difference in dark noise is day and night for long exposures and even 30-60s already shows quite big difference.
I don’t understand why not cooling would allow for shorter exposures. Unless you talk about CCD vs. CMOS. CMOS chips tend to have a high quantum efficiency allowing for shorter exposure times. I use an ASI1600MM Pro Cooled and take 50 sec images in L and 150 sec in R, G and B but all could be about half and I’d still be ok. The reason I take longer exposures is that it means I only have to stack half the number of images.