SGP Cool down feature not working with ZWO 1600 mm pro

[SamAndrew]

Anyone else successfully using the cool down feature on SGP with their 1600?

My camera arrived on Monday, and amazingly have been out with it the past 3 nights (no clouds included with deliveries from 365 it seems  )

Lots to learn with the switch from DSLR to Mono and I have slowly worked it out under the stars these past few nights. I had to order a power cable separately which seems a bit cheap when buying a £1200 camera so only tried the cooler for the first time last night.

Tried using the cool down feature in SGP but nothing really seems to happen. I set it to -10 in 2minutes; initially the power picks up to a few % and the progress bar plods along, but the temperature doesn't really move, and the camera doesn't make an effort to increase the power/cooling. After 2 minutes it's still only using 3~4 percent power and it's cooled 1 degree.

I gave up and turned the cooler off for the session assuming something was wrong with the camera or power supply. At the end of the night I took it inside to try again while shooting darks, and found if I set the temperature and then abort the cool down process, the camera then does it's own thing and makes its way to the desired temp. Set it to -20 which is 40 below inside temp and it got there and stayed steady.

So the cooler works, it just seems like a software issue. Using the latest version of SGP but haven't checked the camera firmware yet. I'll have a go with SharpCap this evening and see if that works ok.

[RolandKol]

I used SGP demo for several months and cooling worked without any flaws on my ASI1600MM-Pro.

SGP has a cooling setting for camera in the main settings menu (cool down once connected or similar) and a separate Cooling tool on the main screen, which I have not used much,

as camera cooled down once connected automatically, just like SharpCap does.

Also, SGP always warned me if I tried to start sequence before camera cooled to the selected temp.

[RolandKol]

P.S.

Also, 2mins to -20C, may be a bit too extreme in a humid London winter time...

Careful... you may get some frost on the sensor... I keep mine in 5min range and not sure if it is safe enough!
but had no problems yet.
In my case, 5 mins usually is the time it takes to do some star alignment for EQMOD, recalibrate PHD, if needed, and re-focus.

[vlaiv]

Same here - been using SGP and never had issues with cooling.

I too set it at 5 minute or more for cooling period. I did once try to do it quicker but it looses on stability and total time to stable temperature is about the same - it goes down but over shoots -20 and goes to -21 or -22 then goes back up to -19 or -18 and after few oscillations it settles - but like I said - it takes time to settle - so I just do it gradually over 5 minute (or more if warmer) period anyway.

[Zakalwe]

There's a tick box in the camera options where the fan and cooling can be disabled.  Make sure that this isn't ticked. It took me a while to work out why my ASI1600 wasn't cooling (and predictably AFTER I spent ages swapping leads, power supplies and what not.   )

[julian489289]

Hi Sam

I am considering the move from Canon 650d to a CMOS.  Been considering the Altair Astro Hypercam 183m pro cool or the ZWO ASI 1600m pro.  Obviously you went for the ZWO, now that you have it and played with it, is this the camera to go for??    Also what filter wheel and filters did you go for??

[SamAndrew]

Seems to be working ok now, not sure what was up with it the first time, maybe it was because I'd connected the camera to SGP and then plugged in the power supply. Set it to -20 over 10 minutes last night and it did the job .

On 15/12/2018 at 19:32, julian489289 said:

Hi Sam

I am considering the move from Canon 650d to a CMOS.  Been considering the Altair Astro Hypercam 183m pro cool or the ZWO ASI 1600m pro.  Obviously you went for the ZWO, now that you have it and played with it, is this the camera to go for??    Also what filter wheel and filters did you go for??

Very happy with it, there's certainly a lot to learn and initial setup was more complicated than I'd anticipated (smaller chip meant I really struggled to align on the first night so I had to hastily download and setup plate solving). Focusing is trickier, and having to refocus between filter changes again adds complication. But once the first 5 minute frame downloaded I was completely blown away. 

Few other teething issues on the first night; my scope is so short that the filter wheel came into contact with the mount with my initial setup, so I had slide the scope down the tube rings and rotate the wheel to one side which unbalanced the scope (couldn't rotate it 180 degrees as it then clashed with the guide scope). Resolved that now by moving the guide scope up as well, but I've ordered some longer dovetail bars.

I went for the ZWO 31mm filters and there's no vignetting at all at F4.9. I haven't had to shoot any flats so far. I managed to put all the filters in the wrong way around on the first attempt as I hadn't checked which side connected to the camera (Doh!). The Ha and SII filters appear to be par focal, the OIII certainly needs a refocus. Haven't tried the LRGB ones yet. I've ordered a Deep Sky Dad autofocuser so that should help achieve better focus.

Have enjoyed learning SGP and PixInsight this week. Next step is to learn how to actually combine the narrowband results into images. I've got a huge backlog to process now but that's never a bad thing

Here's a quickly processed image from last night of the Horse Head. 8 x 5 minutes Ha, no flats, just darks. Auto Stretched with some Noise reduction applied. 

[julian489289]

Thanks Sam, that's a cracking result and doesn't appear to have much noise either.  You have set yourself a steep learning curve though, new camera, new acquisition software and PI ?. 

I have read various reviews of this camera and one downside I have seen is that the sensor window is not AR coated.  However, on the ZWO spec for this camera it states that it has AR coating??  Can you confirm this?

I am so tempted to make the jump and order this camera, the ZWO 7 position FW and Baader 36mm unmounted NB filters.  With NB though, do you find it more difficult to find a decent star to focus on as a lot of the light is filtered out?

Also what are the individual image sizes like as I hear that they are rather large?

[vlaiv]

1 minute ago, julian489289 said:

Thanks Sam, that's a cracking result and doesn't appear to have much noise either.  You have set yourself a steep learning curve though, new camera, new acquisition software and PI ?. 

I have read various reviews of this camera and one downside I have seen is that the sensor window is not AR coated.  However, on the ZWO spec for this camera it states that it has AR coating??  Can you confirm this?

I am so tempted to make the jump and order this camera, the ZWO 7 position FW and Baader 36mm unmounted NB filters.  With NB though, do you find it more difficult to find a decent star to focus on as a lot of the light is filtered out?

Also what are the individual image sizes like as I hear that they are rather large?

Chamber window is AR coated. The thing that you have heard not being AR coated is cover of sensor it self (stuff that they used to protect silicon/pixels).

There are some issues on bright stars due to interference between micro lenses on pixels and this cover window - according to some people. I've seen these issues but personally believe that they are caused with addition of interference filters and that artifacts can vary in intensity depending on setup used - F/ratio of scope, distance and type of filters used. There are several topic both on SGL and on internet discussing this phenomena.

Subs are about 32mb in size each and this is for 16bit version. In processing you will probably convert each sub to 32bit precision after calibration - this means around 64mb. Working with CMOS sensors means shorter subs, so you can easily get to tens of GB of data per target. You should take this into consideration.

[julian489289]

Thank you Vlaiv, I appreciate your response.  A  new storage hard drive may also be required then!!  ?

[SamAndrew]

11 hours ago, julian489289 said:

Thanks Sam, that's a cracking result and doesn't appear to have much noise either.  You have set yourself a steep learning curve though, new camera, new acquisition software and PI ?. 

I have read various reviews of this camera and one downside I have seen is that the sensor window is not AR coated.  However, on the ZWO spec for this camera it states that it has AR coating??  Can you confirm this?

I am so tempted to make the jump and order this camera, the ZWO 7 position FW and Baader 36mm unmounted NB filters.  With NB though, do you find it more difficult to find a decent star to focus on as a lot of the light is filtered out?

Also what are the individual image sizes like as I hear that they are rather large?

Indeed lots to learn, I have tried processing this image several times already, but I've had to drawn a line and will wait until I have some more data.

Regarding focusing, with a Bahtinov mask you can focus anywhere really, it just depends how long you're prepared to expose for. I did a few 20 second exposures on target to check a few times. When I needed to refocus through the Ha filter I was slewing to a nearby constellation star and then using 5 second loops. Just remember to take the mask off and go back to the target afterwards! made both of those mistakes