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Thanks for replying Glen
Much appreciated
I got up this morning at 5am and did some more testing
The 2600MC cooled down to -10C @ 90% power consumption which was better than yesterday
Took 40 x 60 sec Darks and temperature dropped down to - 9.2C @ 98% power consumption and hung around - 9.0C to -9.2C for the whole duration
I am taking Darks inside the house which is warmer than outside by a few degrees ( ambient around 22deg ) however the humidity is ridiculous at 90 to 95%. Sydney has had 80% to 100% humidity for the past week.
A couple of observations and take always from testing -
According to ZWO the 2600MC has a designed working humidity range of 0% to 80% and a Delta T of 35.0C below ambient, so I am pushing the camera and cooler to its absolute limits and marginally beyond
As soon as the capture plan is completed the camera’s temperature drops back down to a nominal -10C within a minute.
Ive always taken a photo or two of the laptop screen at the start of each capture ( too lazy to look at logs ) and checked a few photos back in January/ February this year when temperature and humidity would be higher than the rest of the year. Camera was running at -8.8C to -9.1C with power consumption of 75 to 80% ( time was around 11pm )
This morning when I finished the capture and set the warming function , the camera warmed from -10C to +0.1C in less than a minute. ( normally it takes 3 to 5 minutes )
So I can only conclude that the 3.5 year old cameras cooling system is less efficient than when it was brand new ( my newish 2600MM proves that as the coolers are identical )
Humidity (more so than temperature) must play a huge roll in cooler performance as Sydney’s humidity is ridiculously high night and day this past week and will remain so until the weekend
Once the humidity drops to average or normal ( say 60% to 70% ) I’ll take some more Darks and see how the cameras cooler performs, hopefully a big improvement , fingers crossed.
Martin
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