The 26C and the End of CCD Astrophotography?
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- čas přidán 2. 10. 2020
- Update May 21!
I am slowly in the process of demonetizing all my videos, I was never in it for the money or the glory. I just like to help people. This way you can rest assured i'm not making a video only to trigger an algorithm or as click bait. I have been a bit disillusioned with it all lately, and hopefully this will help.
Instead if you wish to support me you can buy me a coffee or beer instead :) entirely your choice though!
www.buymeacoffee.com/astrostace
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In this video I preview the Altair Astro Hypercam 26C astrophotography camera.
I also discuss whether CMOS sensors like the one in this camera, might possibly be the end of CCD sensors for astrophotography!
A couple of images I’ve captured so far are at the end of the video
Be nice people :)
To pre order the 26C have a looky here:
www.altairastro.com/altair-hy...
Disclosure: Bear in mind that the links in this post are
affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a few pennies (at no cost to you) which in turn helps to support my astro gadget habit and keep all the reviews coming :D
Also for a new awesome astronomy/astrophotography forum, take a look here :
www.backyardastro.org/ - Věda a technologie
The people who dislike this video still do astrophotography with polaroid cameras.
😂 thank you for the support as always
That sounds like an interesting challenge 😂 if only it could be done
Allen Mitchell 😂😂😂😂,I Cant For The Life Of Me Figure Out Why Someone Would To Be Honest,Wow
Great vid Stace and very informative as ever. Helps to have this info when considering this. Thanks lovely and kisses to Luna! X. Gill x
Great video Stace and awesome images. I feel your pain about the clouds ... I've been socked in for months here too in Savannah, GA with only a couple of nights of marginal seeing conditions. As per the Hypercam 26C, hopefully, the folks at Altair will let you keep it after such a wonderful review. You can always just say; "I forgot!".
thank you Stacey that was very informative with out any sales pitches keep up the fantastic work
Great informative video, Stace. Good to see you back.
Good to see you two! I’m so jealous of that huge sensor. Here’s to clear skies 🍻
Great video, from one of the best. Thanks, Stace!
Good, clear and informative review. Refreshing style of presentation. Thank you Stace
Nice to see you again 😊😊. Presumably cmos is cheaper to make, we will have to wait and see what sort of reliability it has and quality gains. Good luck on forgetting you have it.
Hope the weather clear up soon, always the way when new gear arrives, so do the clouds. AP in UK, develops our patience for sure. Will look fwd to your results, though afraid I will end up wanting one :)
Thanks Stacey. Food for thought! I am very happy with my 294c but I do like the resolution of a 26mp image that this camera offers. Combine that with the 16bit and it is pulling me in. The direction of travel is clearly towards CMOS, in my opinion. It has been that way for a number of years now.
Another great video, thank you Stacey.
Nice one Stacey. Weather certainly has been grim in Birmingham. So I am not the only one that has random IT issues. 1st up a hard drive goes down taking all of the last 18 months of data, thankfully I have most of my finals elsewhere, however there were still 3 or 4 projects lost. Hoping the data might be recoverable at a price.
Then last clear night and PHD2 tells me that the mount doesn't have the ability to pulseguide, ????????? Errr, it has for the last 100 or so nights and it did last night, so that was that night lost and a week later I still haven't resolved the issue despite appeals to various forums and groups. The joy of astrophotography, have a good one and thank you for your not review 😊
Holy Smokes,Beautiful Camera,Beautiful Price As Well,lol...Whew...Nice Video,and Well Explained,Thank You🙏🏼❤️🌏🔭Clear Skies...I Havent Seen The Sky In 9 Days😢
CCD v CMOS hmmm horses for courses - sort of. CMOS sensors are now competing with CCDs on bit depth and thermal noise, and as they are mass-produced for other markets (machine vision etc) the prices for astro manufacturers is competitive (low enough for the consumer market - namely 'us'!). CCD production lines are indeed being closed down .. except in the UK ... as Teledyne E2v is just about to start manufacture of 8 inch wafers going up from their 6 inch wafers for CCD chips. These are specialist Class 1 products which are actually used by the likes of NASA/ESA and the Chinese Space Agency (Their CCDs have been on Mars since 2012!). Indeed the James Webb Space telescope will be using them ... So whilst for the 'mass market' CCDs are going to be a diminishing option for now - the future is still open to developments. I'm thinking massive sensors the size of those old 10inch glass plates and larger(!) being used in the monster telescopes of the near future. One area the CCD still holds its own, and that is exposure time - which depending on manufacturer (Atik for example) - can be 'unlimited'. So in summary, for the consumer market it will be CMOS, and for research based projects CCDs will likely have a viable (if specialist) future too.
All closed except E2V fab as far as I am aware. ON Semiconductor shut the former Kodak CCD sensor line with last shipping date of 18 September 2020.
Nice stuff. I'm pretty sure vast from a price standpoint CMOS is going to win out, we've already seen that.
This appears to be the same as the new QHY camera, 16-bit CMOS for aground $2,400USD.
Still not in a position financially to start back up, but I will be soon enough, I guess.
Looking forward to past two.
All Altair cameras are rebrands of chinese company RisingCams cameras. www.aliexpress.com/item/4001359313736.html?spm=2114.12010612.8148356.5.3993e51fjBFtvm. There's significant savings to be had buying direct with the significant downside of poor consumer protection....good luck trying to get a refund!
Thanks for another interesting video. That camera has 16,000 times as much memory as my first computer!
I'm looking for a reasonably-priced solar system imager to use with a 100mm refractor. I'd be shooting both prime focus and using eyepiece projection. Would you have any recommendations?
Greetings from a fellow backyard astronomer out in Colorado. Weather here is great! And as you would say, "it's the bloody fires that are killing me!". Smoke everywhere. The sun is bright orange a 2pm in the afternoon. Today the wind is favorable and I'm hoping for clear skies. I've got a Williams Optics GT102 with a rather poor 0.8 field flattener / reducer that I'm going to replace. Using a Celestron AVX mount with a 50mm William optics guide scope. I was using a ZWO 120mm Mini but I just got a ZWO 290mm mini that I hope is going to improve my guiding. The 120mm mini seemed to have problems with the image jumping around. I can't figure out if it's the camera or my ZWO ASIair Pro. But it seems to be guiding quite nice at around 0.67 total rms and all of a sudden it drops off a cliff. I go to look at my guide image and its jumping from side to side. Does it for like 20 seconds and then stops. Got ZWO scratching their heads. I have it on video, but I'm hoping the 290mm mini does better. If it repeats I'm going to start thinking it may be my ASIair Pro. Anyway, just wanted to say hi and to let you know I enjoy your channel. Hope your weather improves. ;o)
Thanks for another great video. Yet another astro gadget to add to my wishlist. 😁
Great video Stace
Great vid as usual Stace, quick question is the pixel size and sensor size compatible with the AA 72 EDF. Not that I can afford one yet spent too much building my observatory but something for a future upgrade maybe.
I will be interested to see how it performs when the weather plays ball for you.
This camera certainly has some fantastic specs. I'm still torn between going to a mono camera with filters or a OSC from my modded DSLR.
Thanks Stace, yeah for sure now the amp/sensor glow stumbling block has been resolved. I used to constantly window shop Atik CCD's, but now days I window shop the likes of ZWO. You never know, one day I might actually go in the shop! lol
I wanna see how it stacks against the ASI2600MC Pro & the QHY 268C
Hello
I hope the holiday has indeed done you good; and that you can quickly show some results from this Astro camera but the weather is not good just as in Belgium my last pictures were 3 weeks ago and the weather reports are not much better for the first days because I look forward to capturing the Orion nebula with narrow band filters with the ZWO1600 M pro that I bought a few months ago and which I have already obtained nice results see at Astrobin under Frank Bogaerts.
Since I only have these two cameras the ZWO294MC pro and the ZWO1600M pro I can't give an answer whether they are as good or even better than a CCD camera I do know that the improved version of the ZWO1600 M pro also no longer shows glow.
Is there an astrophotography camera for the UK that you'd recommend for £100-150? Maybe I could go to £200 max but would prefer to spend around £100-150. I have the Skywatcher Heritage 130P. Your doggo is adorable though and I got to see Mars for the first time the other night which was very cool.
Owning the 533, & having such good results with that, this sensor really interests me. I was going to go mono but the 533 is so good with the l extreme filter (I split Ha & O3 & recombine), & the 26c is such a good price with a larger sensor it's hard to pass up.
I've been eyeing up the 533 since it's release so it's good to hear your thoughts. I'm fairly sure it's what I'm going for now when funds allow.
I use the ZWO ASI533MC Pro and ASI294MM Pro cameras pretty regularly, and have never owned a CCD camera myself. I think the images we are getting from these CMOS cameras are really good, but...a friend of mine got a Starlight Xpress Trius SX-56 last year, which is a mono CCD camera, and sent me his first SHO data shot with it. When I stretched the first master I almost fell out of my chair. It was stunning. I do have an ASI2600MM Pro on the way, so I'll finally get to compare the 16bit dynamic range, but that CCD data was so much better than anything else I had seen that it makes me think CMOS still has a long way to go to catch up.
hi @AstroStace - nice review, thanks; did you happen to have measured the weight of the device?
Been out of the loop this year - what new goodies have been released ?
Nice one Stace
Seems a lot of equipment be it scopes or cameras recently are all the same but then rebranded. This is almost the same as my QHY268C, 16bit, same sensor, etc although the QHY has 3 shooting modes. And a higher fullwell capacity. Scope wise look at the fantastic 72EDF then look at Rotherham Valley latest “Branded” scope and it’s the same apart from a different splash of colour and now the latest one developed by Trevor Jones, the Raptor which just looks like the sharpstar, again with a different paint job and some different rings added.
The End of CCD? I hope not. I haven't even started yet! lol Nice review Stacey. Cmos definitely seems the way it's going. I suppose Cmos is easier and cheaper to produce, making it more friendlier to the amateur imager's pockets? I'm looking forward to seeing what images you can pull off using the 26C. Let's hope that this awful weather moves away from Birmingham soon.
- Si -
I sold a KAF-8300 CCD for a CMOS a few years back, and I can tell you that my CMOS produces better images than the CCD did. Shocking, I know! But it is true.
Case in point being that I couldn't do 10 minute subs with the KAF sensor without really bad vertical banding getting baked into the image (column defects). Bias couldn't fix them.
My CMOS does 20 minute subs with only a few hot pixels that both are removed by dithering and dark frames.
@@I_Spaced_Out yes, i have heard similar about the KAF sensor having these issues from other users. That is what really put me off switching over to CCD. The high price of CCD's just didn't warrant the issues that come with them.
I have 26C lust... with the weather up here, the only way I’m going to get anything this year is with OSC.
Wouldn’t mind it in mono as well for when I have more time.
Either way, CCD doesn’t really seem to have crossed my radar.
It sounds like that Sony IMX sensor is closely related to some Nikon DSLRs... but having it packaged in a cooled astrocamera is better, of course.
Yes, definitely, we're moving into the era of CMOS sensors and also one-shot-colour (Bayer matrix) cameras. Is there any inherent reason CCD sensors should be better? If anyone can enlighten me about that, I'd appreciate it. I've also heard it claimed that CMOS sensors are nonlinear, but the CMOS sensors in my DSLRs have never displayed any nonlinearity that I could measure, and linear image calibration certainly works.
As for one-shot colour, the classic reason for avoiding the Bayer matrix was pixel size. Now that our pixels are much smaller than star images, I don't think that's an issue. Yes, filter wheels have advantages, but how much of the time do they actually outperform a one-shot camera, especially if you match the *total* amount of exposure time?
Keep up the good work, Stacey! I always enjoy your orderly, informative presentations.
Thanks Stace. I believe this is the same sensor as the ASI2600MC pro, so I was just wondering if there are any important differences between the two cameras?
Not much really! I’m in the uk so prefer to go with Altair, for the uk based support …plus the Altair guys are just genuinely nice. I think regardless, if you went for a red or purple camera you’d be quite happy! Something to bear in mind though is that the zwo version has seen quite a few problems with oil oozing on the sensor.
I meant to say that I would be interested if you could include a comparison of it with and without the l-extreme filter. I am wavering as I fancy the larger sensor size when I get another camera but am used to mono CCD imaging with filters.
I haven’t got an L-extreme filter unfortunately
@@AstroStace Ah well It seemed a good idea at the time.
I do however have a triband filter, you can read about it here :)
www.altairastro.com/altair-triband-osc-ccd-2-filter-322-p.asp?ref=asf
Hi Stace, are you a radiographer by any chance? In my field of endoscopy - they are still using CCD for high def 3M pixel scopes but CMOS dominates the cheaper end of the market.
Hi, no I’m not :) I work with the machines rather than patients. I do QA on the equipment to make sure it’s safe and has good image quality :)
I like the sound of this Stacy. I was going to get a 269hypercam but i think i'll wait and see what kind of results u have with this.. Don't make me wait to long. LOL. astrobill
Have you taken a photo or photos of the pillars of creation, apparently they aren't there any more. Destroyed by a super nova I think. I assume they are in our galaxy.
Thanks STY!!! now you left me wonder about an upgrade... oh dear oh dear ahahahaha
Be good to do some imaging locally at present, but for the fact every cocky farmer, the council and army are burning off the grass and there's smoke everywhere!!! Looks like the 26C will be a keeper :D
hi stace i can recommend kielder and kielder campsite its great dark sky space you will love it i have been twice i love it
Useful info, thank you. But the price is beyond my budget, too bad :-(
I don't think we will ever see the END of CCD sensors in the hobby until they are phased out by manufacturers like Kodak did. As long as someone is making CCD Sensors, and another company is sticking them into astro cams - it's too early to call it the END OF CCDs. Ok, so now that I got that out of the way, I absolutely believe we've passed the precipice where CCD's are declining in popularity and are losing their foothold in serious astro imaging to CMOS cameras from affordable manufacturers such as Altair, ZWO and QHY. CCD companies like SBIG and QSI who traditionally only made CCD cameras will start transitioning to a CMOS product lineup (SBIG has already started) over the next few years.
Great vid. I think CCD has had its day personally. CMOS sensors are cheaper than CCD and unlike CCD. CMOS is mass-produced.
Did you see Coronation street Friday night. Nick Tilsley's long lost son. He's as astro geek and reminds me of somebody. 🤣 You gotta go check him out Stacey.
😆 omg. Brother from another mother?
Lol I saw that it’s the only time I have actually stopped and watched it
1700 pounds works out to nearly AUD $3000 Pass................. it's the same as the zwo version and the qhy version, way too expensive at this stage.
But the QHY268C comes in at £2049 and the ZWO2600 £2069 here in the UK.