Ongoing tests with the e2v sensor

[budski]

The very early hours of the 19th September have been the most favourable so far - albeit with high humidity and unsteady seeing (in my location). The conditions improved towards dawn when this set of RGB's was taken. The 'scope is a modified C11 and the camera is a USB3 mono IDS3240CP-NIR operating at a central Area Of Interest (AOI) of 640x480 (native 1280x1024). Image acquisition software is FireCature v2.2 beta and stacking conducted in AS!2 and finished off in Photoshop CS5. The RGB set was limited to 45 seconds each at f20 (X2 TeleVue). I tried to process the images (a number of times) through the latest incarnation of WinJupos (64bit) but the results were not encouraging.

Technically, in it's AOI mode, the camera can operate at 120 frames per second. I've yet to test this ability properly.

Planets aside, I've taken some Lunar video footage (using the full sensor area) which look very pleasing on a 37" widescreen monitor. Unfortunately, at 20 Gigabytes file size, they are a tad large to take round to your friends.

More results when I get them.

BudJup190912_0452UTRGBPhShp.tif

[budski]

Apologies, hit the 'go' button before I was finished. will sort it out a bit later.

[neil phillips]

H Budski, The image is coming up very noisy. I am interested in any camera that seems a improvement. Is there a reason for so much noise on the image ? I am using only 245 mm primary. And i never get noise that bad

[budski]

Hi Neil, for whatever reason, I've downloaded a thumbnail rather than the full res image - which has now rather inconveniently disappeared... I shall try and hunt it down when I get back to the UK in October. Apologies for this rather poor showing - must do better next time.

Bud

[neil phillips]

Hi again. I think to get a feel of what the camera can do. It would be interesting shooting at 30fps and 60 fps keeping gain as low as possible on some tests. To try and achieve a smooth texture. To rule out noise issues in the camera.

Being more sensetive it should produce less noise, not more. I noticed the other shot posted seemed very pale. and quite noisy too.Though not to the same level as the thumbnail of course. 120 fps would really only be useful if the camera had a amazing amount of sensetivety, or if a large scope was used. If not, it would just make the situation worse. I reserve judgment untill ive seen more tests. But untill i see that smooth natural response. I am not convinced. This is the way forward yet. Time will tell. Whats your thoughts Budski

[riklaunim]

If set to global shutter this sensor will have much more read noise. For planets the exposures should be shorter than around 10 ms. Lower gain would make noticeable difference vs max gain on insane framerate.

[budski]

Hi Neil & Piotr, I knew this was going to be an uphill struggle as there are all sorts of issues that need understanding/resolving. The first problem was with the uEye Cockpit capture program which, incidentally, does not feature the Y800 codec. This software was intended for general industrial applications and would have been a major barrier to progress had I not contacted Torsten Edelmann (the FireCapture author) who kindly passed me his V2.1 (now 2.2) beta program which supports the IDS cameras. I have conducted a series of scripted tests at 30, 60 and 120 fps and all at a number of different exposures, Gammas and Black Levels both in Global and Rolling shutter mode. There is also the option of 16bit and Raw which I've yet to test - clear sky opportunities have been at a premium in the last few weeks. I'm also monitoring the heat build-up within the camera over a period of hours as I'm wondering if there's an issue there. Finally, I'm out of the country (UK) until the second week of October when I resume testing. I'm planning to run some parallel tests with the DMK21.618 for direct comparisons and also use the IDS camera on another telescope (127ED Refractor).

As you see it's a sizeable exercise and as you say Neil, time will tell if this is the way forward.

I'll keep you posted on progress.

Best regards

Bud

[neil phillips]

Hi Neil & Piotr, I knew this was going to be an uphill struggle as there are all sorts of issues that need understanding/resolving. The first problem was with the uEye Cockpit capture program which, incidentally, does not feature the Y800 codec. This software was intended for general industrial applications and would have been a major barrier to progress had I not contacted Torsten Edelmann (the FireCapture author) who kindly passed me his V2.1 (now 2.2) beta program which supports the IDS cameras. I have conducted a series of scripted tests at 30, 60 and 120 fps and all at a number of different exposures, Gammas and Black Levels both in Global and Rolling shutter mode. There is also the option of 16bit and Raw which I've yet to test - clear sky opportunities have been at a premium in the last few weeks. I'm also monitoring the heat build-up within the camera over a period of hours as I'm wondering if there's an issue there. Finally, I'm out of the country (UK) until the second week of October when I resume testing. I'm planning to run some parallel tests with the DMK21.618 for direct comparisons and also use the IDS camera on another telescope (127ED Refractor).

As you see it's a sizeable exercise and as you say Neil, time will tell if this is the way forward.

I'll keep you posted on progress.

Best regards

Bud

Good luck with the tests Bud. I will be watching with interest

[riklaunim]

Clear sky is definitely a rare thing lately. It holds my xiQ camera tests while I'll have to send it back this week. Only few Moon shots (link).