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Old 17-03-2015, 11:20 AM
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Experience & images with the KAI-16070 chip ?

Hi guys,

I am trying to have more information about the results with this chip.

Do you have experience with it with FLI or other ?

Thanks,

Florent
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Old 17-03-2015, 10:21 PM
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Hi,

I have been thinking about this chip as well. Have a look at the Cedic images from Chile. They have several taken with a FLI Proline 16070 camera.

I got so I could spot which image was taken using it. They seemed to be brighter and with better transparency than the others.

On the other hand their KAI29050 images (a sensor I was considering in the past) were weak, washed out and not impressive. Lacked solidity and saturation in the images.

I did see a Cloudy Nights thread suggesting there were issues with the KAI16070 with regards to banding. I saw no evidence of that in the Cedic images.

It seems like a modern update to the KAI11002 chip having nearly 50% more pixels in the same sized sensor and better QE. 7.4 micron pixels and full frame size should suit a lot of telescopes from wide field to long focal length.

Its on my radar. I can't say I "need" it though.

Greg.
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Old 18-03-2015, 10:46 AM
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Thank you Greg for your reply.

If i decide to go for this chip, it will be used with my ASA 12"N f/3.62 and with my TeleVue NP101is.

If other have information, i am interested.

Thanks again.

Best Regards,

Florent
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Old 18-03-2015, 02:30 PM
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On your ASA it would give 1.4 arc seconds per pixel which is quite good on the NP101 it would be 3.2 arc sec. That is undersampled but that does not seem to matter much with FSQ type scopes. You can drizzle to get round small stars if you start getting square stars. I have never had a problem with 9 micron cameras and FSQs.

I think this sensor is interesting although not many are using it. Not sure why. Its hard to find samples.

Alan Chen uses a Starlight Express H36 and has a few images using it. I asked him about it and he said he liked it although had not used it a lot.

The Cedic images though are quite revealing as they use lots of high end gear and Cameras and the 16070 images stood out to me as did the 16803 images. They seemed the best.

Greg.
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Old 18-03-2015, 02:43 PM
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Examples of FLI Proline 16070 images:

http://skypixels.at/m47_info.html
http://skypixels.at/m93_info.html
http://skypixels.at/ngc3766_info.html
http://skypixels.at/m4_info.html

Admittedly taken from great skies in Chile but still if you look around the other images you'll see the Proline 29050 images look a bit weak (they used an AP175 refractor no doubt wanting to match the smaller pixels with the refractor - I don't think it worked well).

There are Proline 16803 images which are very nice. But the 16070 have a nice black background, great colour, a certain clarity and colour saturation that is very nice.

I was very impressed by these samples as I am familiar with the Proline 16803 having imaged with one for the last 6-7 years.

Greg.
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Old 20-03-2015, 08:44 AM
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Hi Greg, hi all,

Just received this reply from Moravian. My 2 questions were information about the KAF-6303 problem dectected in 2013, and why their Moravian G3-16000 with the KAI-16070 CCD chip based was out of their list since late in february.

This is their reply with all information :

" Dear Mr. Poiget,

Thank you for your interest in our CCD cameras. Apparently a few years ago the production of KAF-6303E changed somewhat. Possible redesign lead to introduction of the charge trap in the CCD output node. This charge trap causes smearing of bright pixels (leaving somewhat higher signal in the pixels following bright pixels as the charge is released from the trap. OnSemi agreed this is a manufacturing fault and promised to solve this issue, but we are still waiting to the solution. Unfortunately this effect is visible only if very low noise electronics is used, which is not the case of OnSemi test board and some competing cameras.

The G3-16000 camera shipment is also on hold now because of horizontal charge transfer efficiency problem inherent to KAI-16070 CCDs. The CCD cannot perform horizontal transfer with good enough efficiency and our electronics is so low-noise that it shows the problem. We can only guess the reason is the KAI-16070 architecture, allowing simultaneous read from 4 outputs (astronomical cameras use single output either way). For now, the G3-16000 camera is on hold, OnSemi (former Kodak) obviously cannot do anything with it (their own test electronics digitize to 12 bits only and they do not want to invest into fixing of the CCD to be useable with very low noise 16 bit electronics).

These two detectors are the only problematic. Other detectors work flawlessly, especially the KAF-16803, used in G4-16000, produce superior image with very low noise and uniform field of view without artifacts. See the gallery on the bottom of the http://www.gxccd.com/art?id=383&lang=409 page, please. I believe ASA Wynne 3" coma-corrector can cover the KAF-16803 CCD, providing you have large enough secondary mirror.
"


Best Regards,

Florent
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Old 20-03-2015, 10:46 AM
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Good work Florent!

I guess the KAI 16070 is off my list of interest then.

Perhaps the good old reliable KAI11002 or the KAF16803 is the way to go still. Supplement it with a KAF8300 camera or a Sony ICX694 or 690 camera.

I think I will ask FLI about the 16070. They may have been able to sort it out? Those sample images I sent are very good.

Also the problem they mention - I wonder if that only occurs if you are binning the sensor?

Greg.
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Old 22-03-2015, 03:41 PM
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I asked both Starlight Express and FLI Yahoo Groups about this response from Moravian. Terry Platt from SX said that horizontal register issues result in a trailed star to the right. He said they don't have that problem. He does not that there can be a gradient from top to bottom on these chips from thermal charge in the readout which is handled by fast readout.

Here is the response:

"Hi Greg,

No, poor horizontal transfer efficiency causes stars to trail horizontally, so that they develop short ‘tails’ to their right side. Vertical gradients are usually caused by thermal charge build-up during the readout process and are normally removed by bias subtraction. We reduce this by good cooling and faster readout.

As an aside – we don’t see this transfer efficiency issue with the 16070 chip.

Regards,
Terry"

So it seems like Moravian are not quite understanding something here.

This would match what I have seen. Good images with this sensor from both Starlight Express and FLI.

Greg.

Last edited by gregbradley; 22-03-2015 at 09:25 PM.
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Old 03-05-2015, 07:34 PM
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I've had the opportunity to use both ccd's in the Apogee flavour. First an Alta F29050 (KAI-29050) and an Aspen CG16070 (KAI-16070). I can state I never saw transfer efficiency problems with either camera. I had them attached to a 16" ASA I've installed at SSO so similar set up to you Florent.

The F29050 with its 20k wells was a little disappointing and I found it challenging to use with a fast scope. I ended up taking many 240s exposures to maintain star colours which sounds practical however a 30mp camera result in a raw fits file size of 55Mb, calibrated ~70Mb, then multiply that by 16 or 24 sub exposures and you soon find stacking files an arduous task for a moderately sized image processing system.

The F29050 camera electronics were not up to standard (same banding I saw when I upgraded my Apogee U16M to F16M), with the camera under warranty and Andor (who took over Apogee) no longer supporting the F29050 in their product line, I selected the Aspen CG16070 as the replacement. The CG16070 so far has been a fantastically performing camera. 44k wells, easier to use with fast scopes and a good match in terms of arcsec/pixel. Unfortunately as Murphy would have it, the CG16070 developed an intermittent digitization error and is currently with Andor for investigation. I'm looking forward to getting the CG16070 camera back but in the mean time I'm using a loan Alta F16000 from Andor. I didn't think much of the KAI-16000 ccd but its performing reasonably well. Its actually not too different from the KAI-16070 but a smaller well size (32k versus 44k of 16070).

Attached is a single 240s clear filtered sub (calibrated) showing a blown out M42 (ddp stretched) taken with the CG16070 through the 16" ASA. 50% reduced.

If you go with the KAI-16070, I doubt you'll be disappointed.
Attached Thumbnails
Click for full-size image (M42-Clear-PA000-W-I240-BIN1-LT233222-Scaled.jpg)
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  #10  
Old 03-05-2015, 10:25 PM
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Thanks very much for this writeup Jase. Its what I had personally concluded from simply looking at example images (what few there are on the net - the best examples are from the Cedic team with several of these cameras).

The KAI6070 images looked the best and had a transparency to them which was appealing. The 29050 looked flat and lacked depth and impact. All of them.

Greg.
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