New 16mp ZWO camera

[rustigsmed (Russell)]

Looks very interesting esp for the price.
Qe to be determined still .. US$1180

http://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/...si1600mm-cool/

Sensor: 4/3″ CMOS
Diagonal: 21.9mm
Resolution: 16Mega Pixels 4656×3520
Pixel Size: 3.8µm
Max FPS at full resolution :23FPS
Exposure Range: 32µs-2000s
Read Noise: 1.2e @30db gain
QE peak: TBD
Full well: 20ke
ADC:12bit
Interface: USB3.0/USB2.0
Adaptor: 2″ / 1.25″ / M42X0.75
Protect window:AR window
Dimensions: 78mm Diameter
Weight: 410g
Back Focus Distance: 6.5mm
Cooling: Regulated Two Stage TEC
Delta T: 40-45 below ambient
Cooler Power consumption: 12V at 2A Max


I see bintel have it at $1899

[Slawomir (Suavi)]

Looks very interesting, thanks Russell.

[Terry B]

I can't comment on this camera but a friend tried the 174 version of the camera and found the dark noise to be very high. Cooling made little difference as CMOS doesn't respond to cooling as well as CCD. He abandoned the camera.

[Shiraz (Ray)]

thanks Russel. looks like it could be my next camera.
the sample -25C dark frame they provide is very quiet and the read noise is really low. Just hope the QE is pretty good, but if this is a back illuminated chip (which it may be) then that should be OK as well.

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

FWIW, the sensor sounds like it's from Panasonic as used in the Olympus OMD E-M10 MkII.

Definitely looks promising...read noise looks very low, not wildly above the Sony 224.

[rmuhlack (Richard)]

Originally Posted by Shiraz

thanks Russel. looks like it could be my next camera.
the sample -25C dark frame they provide is very quiet and the read noise is really low. Just hope the QE is pretty good, but if this is a back illuminated chip (which it may be) then that should be OK as well.

From your previous discussion threads on camera sensitivity calcs, I figure this new camera will have at best 2/3rds of the sensitivity of the ICX694. The removable T2 spacer of this new camera means its minimum backfocus is only 6.5 mm, meaning that it would probably be possible to use camera lenses together with a filter wheel, potentially providing a cooled (high QE?) alternative to a DSLR for very wide field deep sky imaging. Is that where you would see this camera fitting in, or would you be looking to pair it with another scope setup (presumably also short FL) ?

[Shiraz (Ray)]

Originally Posted by rmuhlack

From your previous discussion threads on camera sensitivity calcs, I figure this new camera will have at best 2/3rds of the sensitivity of the ICX694. The removable T2 spacer of this new camera means its minimum backfocus is only 6.5 mm, meaning that it would probably be possible to use camera lenses together with a filter wheel, potentially providing a cooled (high QE?) alternative to a DSLR for very wide field deep sky imaging. Is that where you would see this camera fitting in, or would you be looking to pair it with another scope setup (presumably also short FL) ?

Hi Richard. yes, it would be significantly less sensitive than the 694 (which I will definitely still keep for dim galaxy imaging). However, I have felt the need for a bit finer sampling on brighter targets at about this time of year, when seeing can occasionally get below 2 arcsec. The ZWO would provide finer sampling and, with low read noise, it should be usable with ~ 1 minute subs on my 250f4 scope on bright targets, so I would hope to see even better resolution than 2 arcsec using crude lucky imaging.

Then, as you noted, there is Slawomir's idea of using a large-pixel-count /small-pixel chip with a fast camera lens of about 200mm fl for widefield imaging - in theory, should be directly competitive with an 11002/FSQ combo

It also should be very effective for planetary imaging due to the low read noise and high framerates available with sub-image selection.

I had almost decided on a cooled ZWO178 (which is a much more radical change from the 694), but this new camera could well be a better bet. the main downsides would seem to be the reduced sensitivity re the 694 and the thought of processing more than 10x as much data. Regards Ray

[Ross G]

Hello,

This camera is looking good.
I do a lot of my imaging with camera lenses ( 35mm up to 300mm) on a QHY8L ccd.
The stars however can look a bit "blocky" which I think is due to the large pixel size of the ccd. So this camera with it's smaller chip, smaller pixels and 3x the number of pixels seems like a good solution.
Attractive price as well!
However I notice that it has 12 bit ADC as opposed to 16bit on my QHY8L.
Is this going to make a difference to my final image?

Thanks.
Ross.

[Shiraz (Ray)]

it shouldn't make any difference.

most common cameras have around 11-12bits dynamic range (this camera has very slightly more than 12 bits, so it is better than many). The lower bits in 16 bit cameras are generally dominated by read noise, so they do not contribute anything to an image. 12 bits is sufficient to encode almost all of the available dynamic range from the ZWO camera, so no problems.

http://olympus.magnet.fsu.edu/primer...amicrange.html
http://www.photometrics.com/resource...amic-range.php

[Ross G]

Thanks Ray.


Ross.

[alistairsam]

Im very interested in the OSC version of the camera for RGB data with my WOGT81 and they have a relative output/relative QE graph.
is that different from a QE graph that shows QE at different wavelengths?
http://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/...si1600mc-cool/

Alistair

http://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/...I1600MC-QE.jpg

[StuTodd]

Looking forward to the announcement soon.
I see the ZWO website lists 2 adapters for US$35 and $38 (for the T2 to M43).
Nice for narrowband imaging?

AFAIK the 12 bit "inadequacy" can be easily overcome with stacking??

[StuTodd]

The ZWO website Q and A for this camera states now that 2x2 binning will output 10 bit only. Sensor is that of a Olympus DSLM: E-M1.

http://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/...si1600mm-cool/

[rmuhlack (Richard)]

Originally Posted by Shiraz

Hi Richard. yes, it would be significantly less sensitive than the 694 (which I will definitely still keep for dim galaxy imaging). However, I have felt the need for a bit finer sampling on brighter targets at about this time of year, when seeing can occasionally get below 2 arcsec. The ZWO would provide finer sampling and, with low read noise, it should be usable with ~ 1 minute subs on my 250f4 scope on bright targets, so I would hope to see even better resolution than 2 arcsec using crude lucky imaging.

deep sky lucky imaging looks very interesting but i have a few questions...how would deep sky lucky imaging work with a camera like this - Would one capture video as an AVI file and then use planetary imaging software (eg registax or autostakkert) for image analysis and initial stacking, or can it be done using more conventional deep sky processing software like pixinsight? what sort of sub times / frame rates would be necessary. Also if the sub times are short (say less than 1s) , then it would seem like there would be a colossal amount of image data to process if total integration is several hours or more...

[Shiraz (Ray)]

my thought was to use subs of maybe 1 minute or less and apply normal PI processing methods. The gain in resolution (if there is much) would be due to improved rejection of short bursts of poor seeing rather than freezing of the seeing, such as you get at high framerates. However, there are a few very bright targets (eg homunculus), where much higher framerates could be used and it would be interesting to see what AS!2 could do on gigabytes of video at (say) 1 sec framerate. Of course this all depends on the chip having good QE - no data on that yet.

Data quantity and processing time will be a major issue with such a big chip at high framerates - however, some bright targets will not need much overall time and subframe selection + 8 bit digitisation will be appropriate for some. Current planetary image sequences extend up to maybe 20,000 frames with up to 1mpixel frames, so large datasets are manageable. Even so, there will be an order of magnitude step up in processing time and data storage requirements. I hope to have a couple of quad core I7 machines available soon.

[Slawomir (Suavi)]

As long as electronics side of this camera is well designed, then this camera, to my knowledge, could potentially be a very neat CMOS-based cooled astro-dedicated product capable of imaging DSOs in a nice resolution. Hopefully many other designs/manufacturers will follow soon. How much would one need to pay for a camera with similarly-sized CCD sensor?

I will look forward to test reports with great interest

[glend (Glen)]

I am considering ordering the ZWO ASI 1600MM-Cool(mono).
I have been watching the comments on this camera here and on CN, and it looks promising. It would be nice to have a smaller form factor camera after years of cooled dslrs.

[rmuhlack (Richard)]

very impressive result here from the creator of AS!2 with the ASI1600MM: http://www.cloudynights.com/topic/53...si1600mm-cool/

[h0ughy (David)]

Originally Posted by rmuhlack

very impressive result here from the creator of AS!2 with the ASI1600MM: http://www.cloudynights.com/topic/53...si1600mm-cool/

you have to be kidding - WOW what a result thanks for highlighting that link

this certainly changes things, its smooth, detailed yet raw.

and i might be able to get away with doing solar?

[Atmos (Colin)]

2000x1s subs! That's a pretty good result!