Tag Archives: QHYCCD

QHY268C APS-C Colour Camera Review – Part 1

As many of you know, I have been using QHY cameras for a while, but with my plan to move to a RASA telescope next year and wanting to image with a bigger sensor than the QHY183M I decided to go for a bigger sensor but moving away from Mono, the latest addition to the QHY familly is the QHY268C Photographic Version. I had been talking to the QHY team for a long time about this particular camera, and finally I have one.

The QHY268C is a once shot colour camera based on the APS-C Sized back illimunated Sony IMX571 sensor, the camera has a true 16-Bit Analog to Digital Convertor (ADC), now there are a few camera models out there using this sensor, cameras such as the ZWO ASI2600, but one thing that sets the QHY268C apart from the others is the ability to have a 75ke full well capacity which is 25ke higher than the ZWO ASI2600. In my opinion, when imaging at fast focal ratios, a higher full well is desired to protect the colour around bright stars for example.

Opening the box I was greeted with a camera that was bigger and heavier than my 183M, but then the sensor is much bigger than the 183M anyway so this would be expected, but what I did not expect is the additional items that came with the camera:

Inside the box was:

  • QHY268C Photographic Version
  • UK mains plug for 12V AC adapter
  • 12V AC adapter
  • Car 12v power cable
  • Self locking power cable
  • 1.5M USB 3.0 cable
  • Dessicant drying tube
  • Self centering adapter plate
  • M54 to M48 adapter plate
  • M54 to 2″ nose adapter
  • A range of spacers to give you from 0.5mm to 13.5mm spacing
  • Associated screws for spacing adapters

QHY cameras have come along way since I bought my QHY183M, one of the things QHY has really worked on is amp glow, my early version of the QHY183M was renowned for was amp glow, which could be removed in image calibrations, but the QHY268C produces no amp glow whatsoever, below is a dark frame of 600S taken at -13.5C and you can clearly see there is no evidence of amp glow.

Single frame 600 seconds, Gain 26, Offset 30, -13.5C – Mono (Not Debayered)

Attaching to the telescope was pretty straight forward as I had already planned the imaging train before the camera arrived, since I will be using the SharpStar 15028HNT F2.8 Paraboloid Astrograph which has an M48 thread, I decided to keep the whole imaging train at M48 except for the camera of course which has an M54 thread, so I did not actually need to use any of the adapters that came with the camera, the reason for this is because I wanted to include a filter drawer, so my image train consists of the following (from telescope to camera)

  • TSOAG9 – TS Off Axis Guider (9mm)
  • TSOAG9-M48 – TS M48 Adapter for the OAG (2.5mm)
  • TSFSLM48 – TS 2″ Filter Drawer with M48 Thread (18mm)
  • M48AbstimmA05 – TS Optics 0.5mm Aluminium spacing ring (0.5mm)
  • TSM54a-m48i – TS M48 to M54 Adapter (1.5mm)
  • QHY268C with M54 Centering Adapter (23.5mm)

As you can see with all the above I reach my desired back focus of 55mm perfectly, if I was not going to be using a filter drawer (For my Optolong L-Pro and L-eXtreme filters), I would probably have stuck with the spacers that came with the camera. Below is a picture of the camera successfully connected to the telescope.

As far as settings go, after speaking with QHY on this at great length, I will be imaging in Mode 0 (Photographic mode) to avail of the massive 75ke full well, offset I will leave at 30, but Gain I will use two different settings, I will use Gain 0 for most bright objects with the L-Pro filter, but for the L-eXtreme, I’ll probably set a gain level of 26, luckily with SGPro I can set the gain level per object. From a cooling perspective I always image at -20C, one thing I have noticed is that this camera cools to exactly -35C below ambient, I tested this when the ambient temperature was 20.10 degrees, and the camera cooled down to -14.9C, it was always 25C lower until the ambient dropped below 15C and the camera remained at my setting of -20C.

The build quality of the camera is as expected having owned a QHY183M, one thing I did notice is that the fan in the QHY268C is much quieter than the 183M. Technical Details of the camera:

CameraQHY268CQHY183M
Image SensorSony IMX571Sony IMX183
Sensor SizeAPS-C1″
IlluminationBack IlluminatedBack Illuminated
Pixel Size3.76um2.4um
Effective Image26mpx20mpx
Full well capacity51ke
(75ke in extended mode)
15.5ke
ADC16-Bit12-Bit
Image Buffer Memory1GB/2GB128MB
Max Cooling Delta-35C-40C
Weight1006g650g

I can’t wait to get imaging with this camera, I have a very aggresive target list for this year in both RGB and Narrowband with the Optolong L-eXtreme filter, I will write part two of the review once I have some actual imaging data. Time to build my dark library.

SharpStar 15028HNT

After months of trying to get my trusty Sky-Watcher Quattro F4 to work with the ASA 0.73x reducer I decided to go all in on an F2.8 astrograph. After doing some research I stumbled across the SharpStar 15028HNT F2.8 Hyperboloid Newtonian Reflector from my local supplier 365Astronomy.

After toying with the idea and speaking to my good friend Nick from Altair Astro and with the idea of going back to a refractor, I decided that I could not go back to slower than F4 and I wanted something that in essence would work with a bigger sensor than my QHY183M, and the Sharpstar looked like it could work for me, so I placed my order with Zoltan from 365Astronomy and collected it the following day.

Unboxing the scope, I was like a young child at christmas, the scope came with a very sturdy protective hard case and removing the scope out of the case you could immediately feel that a lot of time and effort had gone into producing the 15028HNT.

Aperture: 150mm
Focal Length: 420mm
Focal Ratio: F2.8
Weight: 6kg
Tube Material: Carbon Fiber

With the scope unboxed I started to fit my equipment onto the scope. In order to fit my Sesto Senso I had to rotate the focuser 90 degrees clockwise due to the telescope mounting rings, this is when I noticed an isue that one of the grub screws on the focuser would not tighten and I needed to stop the backlash, fortunately there’s another grub screw on the other side that tightened and stopped the backlash.

Before I attached my imaging equipment, I had to ensure that the telescope was collimated, so I stumbled across the collimation guide which after speaking with my good friend Terry Hancock over at Grand Mesa Observatory who was also evaluating the same scope, we both agreed that the colimation guide wasn’t very well written as it mentioned nothing about collimating the primary. One thing that it mentioned is to remove the corrector, Sharpstar include a tool for you to remove the mounting plate and corrector, but here is a word of advice……..remove this when the telescope is cold, take that advice from someone who tried to remove it whilst it was warm!

I performed a laser collimation with my Concenter Eyepiece to check the secondary, and then a laser to check the primary, now the collimation guide says to remove the corrector, I have done validation with both the corrector removed and the corrector in place, and it made no difference whatsoever, so my opinion is to leave the corrector in place.

With the scope closely collimated, I mounted my StarlightXpress Filterwheel and Camera which with the 15028HNT is an M48 thread for the gear to screw onto.

I will post some images as soon as I have completed some, the weather has been pretty poor (probably because I bought a new scope), but the frames I have got so far are very sharp, pinpoint and I can honestly say I have never seen images come directly off the camera so sharp.

My field of view with the QHY183M is around 1.21 Arcsec/Pixel which gives me a FOV or around 1.81°x1.2° and I love the difraction spikes being at 45 degrees compared to the 90 degrees on the skywatcher and I already have a pretty full target list for this scope ready to go this season.

Apart from the couple of product issues I have experienced (Grub screw on focuser and tube clamp thumbscrew being threaded) I am extremely happy with the scope, it is performing really well and here are a couple of work in progress images that I have started

Dark Shark Nebula Moscaic Panel 1 – 51x300S in Red, 25x300S in Green and Blue
Elephant’s Trunk – 51x300S in 6nm Ha
M45 – Mosaic Panel 1 – 12x150S in R, G and B

After a few weeks, the telescope has held collimation very well, I have not had to perform any re-collimation, I will re-evaluate this in the much colder months of winter.

I am so happy with the scope that I am actually considering a second one for an OSC Camera with a bigger sensor.

StarlightXpress Lodestar X2

I was lucky enough that Terry from StarlightXpress sent me a Lodestar X2 for me to test to see how well it performed against my existing guider camera, so it only seemed fair that I provide my feedback via an equipment review. Many who know me know I have been using a QHY5L-II camera as a guide camera for a few years now but after seeing a few of my fellow astrophotographers using the Lodestar cameras it seemed silly not to try one out.

In comparison to the QHY5L-II the Lodestar X2 is a true CCD camera and not a CMOS camera, so immediately this would yield some higher sensitivity in what stars can be selected. One thing that is immediately noticable between the cameras is the Lodestar X2 is longer than the length of the QHY5L-II.

Just to add some more comparisons:

QHY5L-IILodestar X2
SensorAptima MT9M034Sony ICX829
Sensor TypeCMOSCCD
Sensor Size6.66mmx5.32mm6.47mmx4.81mm
Pixel Size3.75um8.2umx8.4um
MPX1.2mpx0.4mpx
QE74%77%
Length54mm85mm
Weight45g50g
Cost (27 Aug 2019)£175£378

The first time I used the Lodestar X2, I was shocked at how many stars were in the field of view, for the same 2 second exposure I usually guide at there was a lot of stars to choose from, far more than I could see with the QHY5L-II, there is probably a number of reasons for this, higher sensitivity of the CCD Sensor, slightly higher QE, but also the FOV, with the QHY5L-II on my 8″ Quattro with a 0.73x reducer it would yield a field of view of 0.47°x0.35°, the Lodestar X2 on the other hand would yield a field of view of around 0.6°x0.48°.

Since I use PHD2 for guiding one thing that was immediately apparent was the built in driver for StarlightXpress cameras, I asked Terry which would be the best to use, he said either, it makes no difference, so I tested this and he was right, the in built driver and ASCOM driver produced the exact same result, I remember specifically with the QHY5L-II that QHY recommend you do not use the in built driver and always use the ASCOM driver. When firing up the Lodestar X2 in PHD2 I built my dark frame library in order for me to see how good the ICX829 was for noise, so I compared the 2 second exposures and there was very little difference between using a dark frame library versus not using one, the QHY5L-II definitely requires a dark frame library in PHD2 that’s for sure!

My first night of guider testing seen a little bit of odd behavoiur with the Lodestar X2, since I am using the Pegasus Astro Ultimate USB Hub, I had everything connected in there, including the QHY183M which is a USB3.0 camera albeit connected to a USB 2.0 hub. When the camera was downloading the image the Lodestar would display an array of dots on the screen. Terry confirmed that it was an indication that it was dropping down to USB 1.0 speed. It turns out that when I did the same thing with the QHY5L-II as the guider camera, the QHY5L-II would actually go unresponsive according to PHD2, so I moved the imaging camera to a dedicated USB 3.0 port on the Intel NUC and never had a repeat of the issue on either camera.

PHD2 has no issues picking up and selecting a guide star, there’s plenty of stars to choose from

Conclusion
The Lodestar X2 is awesome as a guide camera, it works extremely well, very sensitive, the only drawback in my opinion is price, at over double the price of the QHY5L-II camera maybe a tad out of some folks price range.

M101 / NGC 5457 – Pinwheel Galaxy in RGB

M101 / NGC5457 or most commonly known as the Pinwheel Galaxy is a face on spiral galaxy in Ursa Major and has a distance of around 21 million light years from Earth.

The QHY183M picks up quite a lot of the Ha detail in this galaxy without me having to image separate Ha Filter data

Image Details:
101x150S in R
101x150S in G
101x150S in B

Total Capture time: 12.6 Hours

Acquisition Dates: Feb. 27, 2019, March 29, 2019, March 30, 2019, April 1, 2019, April 11, 2019, April 12, 2019, April 14, 2019

All frames had 101 Darks and Flats applied

Equipment Details:
Imaging Camera: Qhyccd 183M Mono ColdMOS Camera at -20C
Imaging Scope: Sky-Watcher Quattro 8″ F4 Imaging Newtonian
Guide Camera: Qhyccd QHY5L-II
Guide Scope: Sky-Watcher Finder Scope
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ8 Pro
Focuser: Primalucelab ROBO Focuser
FIlterwheel: Starlight Xpress Ltd 7x36mm EFW
Filters: Baader Planetarium RGB
Power and USB Control: Pegasus Astro USB Ultimate Hub Pro
Acquisition Software: Main-Sequence Software Inc. Sequence Generator Pro
Processing Software: PixInsight 1.8.6

NGC4565 – Needle Galaxy in RGB

The Needle Galaxy is located int he constellation of Coma Berencies and is an edge on spiral galaxy at a distance of 30-50 million light years from earth

Image Details:
101x150S in R
101x150S in G
101x150S in B

Total Capture time: 12.6 Hours

Acquisition Dates: Jan. 28, 2019, Feb. 3, 2019, Feb. 25, 2019, Feb. 26, 2019, Feb. 27, 2019, March 26, 2019, March 29, 2019, March 30, 2019, April 1, 2019

Equipment Details:
Imaging Camera: Qhyccd 183M Mono ColdMOS Camera at -20C
Imaging Scope: Sky-Watcher Quattro 8″ F4 Imaging Newtonian
Guide Camera: Qhyccd QHY5L-II
Guide Scope: Sky-Watcher Finder Scope
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ8 Pro
Focuser: Primalucelab ROBO Focuser
FIlterwheel: Starlight Xpress Ltd 7x36mm EFW
Filters: Baader Planetarium RGB
Power and USB Control: Pegasus Astro USB Ultimate Hub Pro
Acquisition Software: Main-Sequence Software Inc. Sequence Generator Pro
Processing Software: PixInsight 1.8.6

NGC 2264 – Cone Nebula and Christmas Tree Cluster in HaRGB

Located in the constellation of Moneceros, this image shows both the Cone Nebula and the Christmas Tree Cluster, located around 2600 light years from earth the Cone Nebula being an emmision Nebula

Image Details:

101x150S in R
101x150S in G
101x150S in B
101x300S in Ha

Total capture time: 21 Hours

Acquisition Dates: Jan. 9, 2019, Jan. 31, 2019, Feb. 3, 2019, Feb. 14, 2019, Feb. 15, 2019, Feb. 23, 2019, Feb. 24, 2019, Feb. 25, 2019, Feb. 26, 2019, Feb. 27, 2019, Feb. 28, 2019, March 24, 2019, March 25, 2019, March 26, 2019, March 28, 2019, March 29, 2019

The NBRGB Script in PixInsight was used to blend the Ha into the RGB Image

101 Darks, Flats and Flat Darks were used in the frame calibration

Equipment Details:
Imaging Camera: Qhyccd 183M Mono ColdMOS Camera at -20C
Imaging Scope: Sky-Watcher Quattro 8″ F4 Imaging Newtonian
Guide Camera: Qhyccd QHY5L-II
Guide Scope: Sky-Watcher Finder Scope
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ8 Pro
Focuser: Primalucelab ROBO Focuser
Filterwheel: Starlight Xpress Ltd 7x36mm EFW
Filters: Baader Planetarium RGB and Ha
Power and USB Control: Pegasus Astro USB Ultimate Hub Pro
Acquisition Software: Main-Sequence Software Inc. Sequence Generator Pro
Processing Software: PixInsight 1.8.6

M78 / NGC 2068 in RGB

This is the first time I have ever imaged this object, I will re-visit next year when I will image at F2.8 with a wider field of view using a keller reducer.

Since this object is in the southern area of sky, I am limited by trees and the house on the data I can capture in a single night

Image Details:
101x150S – Red
101x150S – Green
101x150S – Blue

101 Darks, Flats and Dark Flats

Image Acquisition Dates: Jan. 1, 2019, Jan. 2, 2019, Jan. 8, 2019, Jan. 9, 2019, Jan. 27, 2019, Jan. 28, 2019, Jan. 30, 2019, Feb. 10, 2019, Feb. 20, 2019, Feb. 23, 2019, Feb. 24, 2019, Feb. 25, 2019

Equipment Used:
Imaging Camera: Qhyccd 183M Mono ColdMOS Camera at -20C
Imaging Scope: Sky-Watcher Quattro 8″ F4 Imaging Newtonian
Guide Camera: Qhyccd QHY5L-II
Guide Scope: Sky-Watcher Finder Scope
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ8 Pro
Focuser: Primalucelab ROBO Focuser
FIlterwheel: Starlight Xpress Ltd 7x36mm EFW
Filters: Baader Planetarium RGB and Ha
Power and USB Control: Pegasus Astro USB Ultimate Hub Pro
Acquisition Software: Main-Sequence Software Inc. Sequence Generator Pro
Processing Software: PixInsight 1.8.6

IC36 Y Cas Nebula in SHO

Located in the constellation of Cassiopeia this rather feint nebula is illuminated by a very bright Magnitude 2.15 star Navi

Image Details:
101x300S in SII – Red Channel
101x300S in Ha – Green Channel
101x300S in OIII – Blue Channel

Total integration time: 25.2 Hours

101 Darks, Flats and Dark Flats applied

Acquisition Dates: Oct. 27, 2018, Dec. 13, 2018, Dec. 27, 2018, Jan. 1, 2019, Jan. 2, 2019, Jan. 4, 2019, Jan. 8, 2019, Jan. 9, 2019, Jan. 11, 2019, Jan. 18, 2019, Jan. 20, 2019, Jan. 23, 2019, Jan. 27, 2019, Jan. 28, 2019, Jan. 30, 2019

Equipment Details:
Imaging Camera: Qhyccd 183M Mono ColdMOS Camera at -20C
Imaging Scope: Sky-Watcher Quattro 8″ F4 Imaging Newtonian
Guide Camera: Qhyccd QHY5L-II
Guide Scope: Sky-Watcher Finder Scope
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ8 Pro
Focuser: Primalucelab ROBO Focuser
FIlterwheel: Starlight Xpress Ltd 7x36mm EFW
Filters: Baader Planetarium Ha, SII and OIII
Power and USB Control: Pegasus Astro USB Ultimate Hub Pro
Acquisition Software: Main-Sequence Software Inc. Sequence Generator Pro
Processing Software: PixInsight 1.8.6