QHY5 Passive Cooling

[GuillermoBarrancos]

Time to come clean

I followed Rick's example and added an aluminium lump:) to the rear of the chip, the block plus thermal paste comes into contact with the rear of the chip and then the underside of the ally case.

Unfortunately like Rick, I hadn't done any dark frame tests prior to the mod but I did try at some DSO's a while ago and was quite impressed at the sensitivity of the chip-Rick's the Master tho !

On cold winters nights the passive cooling is noticeable I believe and since it was an easy and reversible mod I felt I had little lose and a bit to gain

Of course the problem is using it for DSO's left me without a means of guiding so exp were limited but take it from me the possibilities exist !

If I could figure out a reliable method of using the Lumenera for guiding i might give it another whirl later this year.

I still think when cond.s are good the QHY5 with the larger chip makes a superb luna cam, making mosaics less traumatic

The DSO pictures he put up there, he did with 6-8 second exposures.

So with a good reliable mount you can do without guiding.

People have been taking up to 60-120 second exposures without guiding (but then you really need to have a perfectly polar aligned mount).

It's just really impressive what he managed to do, with this camera and able to push it beyond the advertised abilities.

The amount of detail of those planetary images are just amazing as well!

It also shows how powerful and sensitive those Micron CMOS sensor really are!

[riklaunim]

You TOTALLY missing the whole point here.

Where I'm missing it ?

Don't divide cameras as shop or vendors do - that DS imaging is only for cooled OMG DS cameras and planetary is only for planetary cameras. They want you to think so and buy DS super cameras just to try DS imaging. If you try DS with "planetary" od "guide" camera they won't be happy because you won't buy anything new And so called "planetary" or "guide" cameras can't be much worse than "DS" cameras as requirements for them are also high - they aren't "****".

QHY5 gives 1280x1024 pixels and that is a nice big image. There is no point in not aiming it at quasars, galaxies, nebulas or alien ships. It won't give results like KAF cooled to -666C but still it will give results that will satisfy many peope. Try, test, check, compare, innovate, invent but remember that there is no holy grail for it

[jgs001]

He is good isn't he ?

I think his skies are a little more reliable tho John (Central Europe) & that helps. I find it hard to imagine why I would want to sell this cam TBH.

Very... reliable skies will certainly help, but getting 500 x 8seconds is quite easy as you don't actually need a very long time to get it. As for unguidded, with my HEQ5 I'm good for 2 minutes, but it's not so easy to cool the 5v.

As for disposing of mine, I'm with you there, it's doing a cracking job on the moon, and whilst I've only tried it on Mars the once, and I really wasn't sure on the settings to use, I still got surface detail out of it. Can't wait to get it on Jupiter, although my images will be mono for a while yet..

[beamish]

Here you go boys

Cooling the QHY5 imager/autoguider (step 1) - Thx8411's pages

nice 'n' easy provided you have the "window" in the PCB

I can't find them ATM but Rick had done some DSO's with longer exps

But your right about the shorter exp John, my only attempt was really an experiment tagged at the end of a session when i ready for bed , but I will give it a go over the winter.