First Light for QHY-8L

[Fugazid]

Arrived yesterday afternoon & praise be, the clouds disappeared :-)
LXD200 10" @2500mm, PHD guided. No filters. Stacked in DeepSkyStacker then onto PS4.

NGC2070 Tarantula Nebula 15 x 300s subs. Half were taken with the TEC off!!
I did try taking darks but only managed to take 5 & they just added to the noise. (Probably due to the different TEC temps)

NGC3372 Eta Carinae Nebula 4 x 120s subs. Again no darks..

A few things I found out about the QHY-8L:
In DeepSkyStacker the FITS camera selector doesn't load the correct Bayer pattern when you select QHY8. I had to use Generic GBRG.

When using the supplied software EZCAP, the TEC controller seems to be ignored when you start capturing an image. This means if your TEC is at 80% the readout may state a temp of -15ºc (my desired temp) but may well be at -25ºc (Just carried on past -15 until it stabilised at whatever the 80% temp may be) & you won't know until the end of the capture...Moral of this story is to make sure the TEC is at stable temp before taking shots.

[h0ughy]

looks like a great first shot, i may be inbterested in getting one of these. Can you post a pic of it all setup?

[Fugazid]

I was too busy taking a shot of a bee in a spiders web about to be eaten & forgot to take one of the setup .. But the clouds don't look too bad at the mo. If tonight is good & I can manage another all-nighter I'll post one tomorrow.

[DJ N]

Nice first light!! My QHY8-L arrived yesterday as well!! Just hoping for some cloudless skies tonight to give it a quick test.

With regards to the temperature control,did you have it set to auto. From my undestanding, having it set to manual controls the percentage power, whereas for auto you regulate the temperatue.

Cheers,

Daniel

[Fugazid]

On Auto. I was going from -10 to -15. The regulator got to -15 by upping the percentage power to aprox 13%. When it got to -15, I stated imaging but it appears that the TEC stayed at 13% until I downloaded the image from the camera. At this point the temperature graph jumped to -23 or so. It looks like when you take an image the auto part of the regulator isn't being fed real time temperatures. It's just a case of waiting for the TEC to stabilise before taking an image. (I'm pretty sure actually that when you take an image, the temp graph actually stops scrolling too)..

Cheers Now

Darron

[Hagar]

Hi Darron acouple of very respectable images. The TEC can take some getting used to and needs to be controlled by turning it off then on again and placing it in Auto.
Better still is to get a copy of MaximDL and use the ascom drivers to control the whole lot from Maxim.
Having used QHY cameras for quite some time I can assure you my best results were when using Maxim.
Also my own finding about temprature with the QHY8Pro were that the optimum temprature for the Sony CCD was about -20 and at this temprature there is almost no need for darks. Not saying there is no improvement using them just there is not a huge difference but there is still some gains.

Good luck with it all.

[multiweb]

Those two shots are terrific! Love the details in there. :thumbsup:

[Fugazid]

Thanks for the tips guys, I'm looking into MaximDL but the cost is baulking me. Seems I'm perfectly happy shelling out 1000's on hardware but when it comes to software NOPE. Will have to Download a trial copy & see if it can get me hooked.

A couple of shots of my rig. I'm still waiting on a set of rings from OPT, so please don't be too critical of the home made attachment for the baby APO.

Clouds have gone away & I'm seeing what the camera does on my SN10, being an F4 scope I'm hoping for some good things...Time will tell.

Cheers now

Darron

[multiweb]

MAXIM is certainly an investment down the road as it's quite costly but you get what you pay for. It's a terrific piece of software. Meanwhile your set-up will work fine with Nebulosity which is 50 odd bucks and PHD which is free. You'll get very good results with these two.

[Manav]

QHY-8L looks very impressive indeed