elken2004
30-10-2015, 12:42 AM
I bought this CCD for planet imaging and also some deep sky.
I have hardly used it but thought it would be worthwhile trying to drop its chip temp down from the roughly 30 degrees they run at especially during high frame rates on USB3.
The pics pretty well show the construction
I used a northbridge heatsink from an old system Mobo I had
The fan is older style (bearing type) cpu fan 12volt type.
I had a TEC from years ago, in fact three of them.
I am driving the TEC with about 10 volts at 2 amps.
The temp drop is very good, ambient of about 25 degrees, chip temp of about 34 degrees, I manged to drop it down to 16 degrees.
I did three tests one at 34 degrees, one at about 20 degrees, the third shot was Dark subtraction and hot pixels removed.
All the shots were using the Fire software as supplied with the asi174.
The last pic is adjusted to show detail
The second last is the cooled version of the third last pic. hope that makes sense.
Oh PS: the reason for 10 volts @ 2 amps, was to prevent chip getting damp from condensation. ( would luv to put TEC direct on CCD chip. but maybe later! bit expensive to do that yet...
I have hardly used it but thought it would be worthwhile trying to drop its chip temp down from the roughly 30 degrees they run at especially during high frame rates on USB3.
The pics pretty well show the construction
I used a northbridge heatsink from an old system Mobo I had
The fan is older style (bearing type) cpu fan 12volt type.
I had a TEC from years ago, in fact three of them.
I am driving the TEC with about 10 volts at 2 amps.
The temp drop is very good, ambient of about 25 degrees, chip temp of about 34 degrees, I manged to drop it down to 16 degrees.
I did three tests one at 34 degrees, one at about 20 degrees, the third shot was Dark subtraction and hot pixels removed.
All the shots were using the Fire software as supplied with the asi174.
The last pic is adjusted to show detail
The second last is the cooled version of the third last pic. hope that makes sense.
Oh PS: the reason for 10 volts @ 2 amps, was to prevent chip getting damp from condensation. ( would luv to put TEC direct on CCD chip. but maybe later! bit expensive to do that yet...