QHY 183C problems/broken?

[IDM]

I am having problems with my QHY183C camera. It worked fine last winter but I have been trying to get it working as part of a second telescope system. I am using Sharpcap 4 software and the camera seems to connect . I checked the device manager and it says the camera is working normally.

In Sharpcap the camera can be selected and I have set the default gain as 11 with offset 30 USB traffic is 0. This is the same as last year and I understand these to be the optimum settings.

When I tried to use the scope (Skywatcher Equinox 80) with the camera to polar align I cannot see any stars, however much I increase the gain and or the exposure time. In desperation I pointed the scope at the moon which does appear in the live view but the colour looks all wrong the moon appears sepia like some ancient photo.

I used the moon to check focus then tried to detect stars in other points of the sky and again could find nothing irrespective of gain and or exposure. The guidescope which is a 50mm Skywatcher guidescope with Zwo ASI120MC had no problems seeing stars wherever the telescope was pointed.

Other settings are:

RAW16

Binning 1x1

FITS

Dabayering on

Video live OFF

Force Still OFF

Gamma 1

Brightness 0

Contrast 0

White balance (R) 64

White Balance (G) 64

White Balance (B) 64

 

Is there something wrong with my settings or is my camera broken?

Grateful for any thoughts.

Ian

[michael8554]

You were able to focus the moon with the Skywatcher Equinox 80 ?

When you tried to resolve stars did you have SharpCap in Long Exposure mode with at least 2 seconds exposure ?

Michael

[IDM]

Hi Michael,

Yes, I tried up to probably 60 seconds. However, I balanced gain and exposure time the sky was either black or noise (when I tried long exposure high gain). I did use this telescope combination last year on galaxies and all seemed fine. I wondered if maybe a Sharpcap update might have affected in the camera, though to be honest I haven't kept track of when I did updates.

I also wondered about the USB cable, but the same cable works fine with my Zwo ASI294MC pro. Additionally I tried other cables non have helped.

I might try Nina incase its Sharpcap that's causing the issue. Is there anything else I should consider before condemning the camera?

Thanks

Ian

[IDM]

I sorted the problem last night. 

I have been doing some planetary imaging and using the zoom function in Sharpcap to help with focusing and whilst I had reset the zoom to 100%, this does not seem to work properly with the QHY183C and the result is that the image is still hugely zoomed in and therefore the likelihood of seeing a star in the field of view was unlikely. Even at 20% the image was zoomed. I eventually put Zoom back to auto and all seems fine.

Stupid mistake but hopefully someone else can learn from my error.

Ian